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N. M. Kansara
Jinasena seems to have kaowa the Brhat-katha of Guṇādhya in its original, since he specifically refers to it with words with ingenious double entendre in quite complimentary terms.10 It is quite plausible that Jinasena as well as Gunabhadra may have used Gunadhya's or some other work of that pattern like the Vasudevahindi, which seems to have been known to some Tamil authors as well.11 Of the Bṛhatkatha there is a Tamil adaptation, Perungadai by Konguvel, with Udayana as its hero. Konguvel is held to have flourished sometime between the fifth and the eighth centuries A.D.1 R. Narasimhachariar has brought to light the fact that the Ganga king Durvinīta (c. A. D. 560-610) composed a Sanskrit version of the Bṛhatkatha.13 Side by side with the literary works on Jivandhara, there were being composed in the South, Kavyas about some other religious heroes like Varänga, Yasodhara Karakandu and others in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Kannada and Tamil.14
The pattern of the story of JIvandhara to some extent resembles to the outline of the story of Naravahanadatta in Gunadhya's Bṛhatkatha, as preserved in the medieval Sanskrit compendia of the work, such as Brhat-katha-bloka sangraha, the Bṛhat-katha-mañjart and the Katha-saritsagara. The fact that Jinasena was induced to claim for his Mahāparāṇa a status on par with that of Gunadhya's Bṛhat-kathā,10 testifies to the fact that the Jaina authors were quite fascinated by the work, and they were inclined to cast the stories of their own celebrated heroes so as to conform to the pattern in Gaṇāḍhya's work in a bid to gain comparable popularity for them with masses in general or at least with the Jaina society in particular. And Gunabhadra seems to have drawn on such folklore for the elaboration of the stories of the celebrated heroes like JIvandhara and others.
The story of Jivandhara in the UP is in the form of a sub-story, narrated by Gaṇadhara Sudharma in response to the enquiry by King Śrenika who is said to have got curious when he saw JIvandhara Muni poised in meditation under an Aśoka tree. The various incidents of this tale are connected together only insofar as they relate to the life of Jivandhara. As is natural in work like a Purana, no attempt has been made here to give a particularly refined literary form to the narrative, which, though straight forward, covers about 409 verses (i.e. from vs. 183 to vs. 691) couched in the Anustubh metre, except the three concluding ones of the Parva. The purpose expressed here is to illustrate the unexpected turns of events due to good or bad luck, the ups and downs in human life, and the unfailing consequences of one's good and
bad deeds,16
Likewise, in the treatment of all the tales and of the story of Jivandhara in his Tisatthi-mahap risa-guṇālamkara, i.e. the Apabhramśa Mahapurana (MP) Puspadanta, too, closely follows the text of the MP in Sanskrit by Jinasena-Gunabhadra, who it appears, represent the Digambara Jaina tradition; the only difference is that the narrative is divided into 20 kaḍavakas. The work is dedicated to Bharata, the minister of Kṛṣṇa III (A.D. 939-968) of the Rästraküt dynasty.18 P. L. Vaidya accepts
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