Bhagavana Mahavira and his Relevance in Modern Times

Author(s): Narendra Bhanavat, Prem Suman Jain, V P Bhatt
Publisher: Akhil Bharat Varshiya Sadhumargi Jain Sangh

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Mahāvira and His Relevence
who was extremely stingy and never offered alms to religious mendicants. Once when they came to her house she hounded them away with a burning stick. In his Bhavabhāvanā Maladhari Hemacandra has depicted the character of a quarrelsome mother-in-law who always found fault with her daughter-in-law and who never entertained any sādhu.
All these narratives were based on events from every day life in Prakrit literature, which, later on, influenced Hindi literature. Introduction of Love Stories :
The realistic touch in narrative literature was not effective; hence the Jains introduced erotic sentiments in their stories. While enumerating kathās, Haribhadrasuri mentions erotic story (kāmakathā) as one of them. He has compared kathāsundari (story in the form of a lovely woman) to a new bride, who is beautiful, who has put on alamkāras has a lively gait (lalitapada), and is sweet-tongued (samlāpa). Samghadāsagani (5th century A. D.), the author of Vasudevahindi, elucidating this point, has stated : “People are delighted on listening to the popular love stories such as Naravāhanadatta and others. As sugar tastes bitter to a patient who is suffering from billious fever, so too does seem religion distasteful to people. As a physician prescribes medicine of his choice to a patient who is reluctant to take an unpleasant pill, similarly, I wish to narrate the religious stories under the garb of erotic tales, to those whose mind is engaged with sexual love stories.”
After this the Jain writers composed various love narratives such as Taramgavatīkatha, Malayavati, Magadhasenā, Bandhumati, Sulocanā and many others which are unfortunately not traceable. Taramgavatīkathā was probably the first independent work of Pādaliptasūri, a renowned poet in the court of Häla, alongwith Gunādhya. The poet Dhanapala in his Tilakamanjari has compared this important work with the sacred Ganges which takes a graceful course. However, this work was restored in abridged form as Taramgalolā by Virabhadra, composed after one thousand years of the original work.
These love stories were replete with descriptions of festivals in honour of cupid (Madanamahotsava),festival of spring (Vasantakrida) wedding ceremony, pleasure-houses, the necessity of studying erotic
science and so on. Here is one of them. A young man gazes at a