Arya Bhadrabahu

Author(s): M A Dhaky
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

Page 34

Arya Bhadrabahu
141
Bhadrabahu was still alive and then was in Nepāla11. It is difficult to reconcile the two totally differing and absolutely conflicting notices, their content standing poles apart. If these two represent not only very different traditions but also may refer to two separate Bhadrabāhu-s, which, somewhat remotely, may be a plausibility, then the first Bhadrabahu belonged to the Mauryan period and the second was of a later date who may have migrated to Śravanabelgola. However, the concerned biographical anecdotes of the two Bhadrabahu-s (if the second really existed) were confounded in the past and the today's messy confusion arises therefrom111. It generates a formidable conundrum which, in the present state of evidence cannot be resolved.
10) The complete absence in north India of inscriptions mentioning the ganas and the śākhās that had originated from Bhadrabahu's lineage is a pointer to the fact that Bhadrabahu's disciples and hagiological descendents were not in north India (Bengal and perhaps Orissa to be precise) and, by implication/deduction, had migrated to the Southern territories and settled there. Some, plausibly during the years of the draught, had gone as far as Simhala-dvipa, while several apparently had settled in the Pandyan country in lowermost Tamilnadu where the earliest grotto inscriptions (c. B.C. 2nd1st cent A.D.) indicating the passing away, apparently of the Nirgrantha recluses-assumably by the rite of sallekhana-have been inferred112.
11) Bhadrabahu of the Mauryan period, even if he really may have gone to Śravanabelgola, he may have done so a few years subsequent to the Pataliputra Synod and after Sthulabhadra's learning the Purva texts from him. There is no reason to brush aside the Northern sources on the point of Bhadrabāhu-Sthūlabhadra association. That particular tradition is, as recorded in the Northern literarily notices, positively anterior by about three centuries to the mid-seventh century Southern epigraphical reference that at best is suggestive only obliquely of the Bhadrabāhu-Candragupta connection with Śravanabelagola, while another epigraphical source at the same site, which is half a century anterior to the former, explicitly refers to Prabhäcandra and his (unnamed) disciple and not at all to Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta: but the earliest literary source, the commentary of Bhrājisņu (c. 9th-10th cent.) talks about Bhadrabahu and SampratiCandragupta (the ruler of Ujjayani) visiting Śravanabelagola and not the Maurya emperor Candragupta (who ruled from Pataliputra), who was