Caurasi Bol

Author(s): Padmanabh S Jaini
Publisher: Siddhantacharya Pt Fulchandra Shastri Foundation Roorkee

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A few years ago while on a visit to Karanja, the Jain city, which has provided scores of rare Apabhramsha manuscripts to the late Professor Hiralal Jain of Amaravati, I came upon a rare and unique manuscript strangely called Caurāsī Bol. This manuscript was found in the temple called Balātkāra Gana Mandir. It is written in ink on long legal-size pages with roughly 14 lines per page, in a language known as Dhumdhāri, somewhat similar to the language of the Mokshamārga-prakashaka of Pandit TodarMal (circa 17101760).
Unfortunately the work does not give any information regarding the name, place or date of the author. It undertakes an elaborate discussion of the points, which appear in Hemarāja Pānde's poetical composition the Sitapata Caurāsī Bol. Strangely enough the anonymous author of this work does not refer to Hemarāja Pānde's by name or to his work, or the Samayasūra-Nataka of Banarasidas. He is also silent about the two Shvetāmbara refutations mentioned above (namely the ones by Yashovijaya and Meghavijaya). And yet it is a very elaborate and extensive work, written in a spirit of sectarian zeal. What is even more interesting is that after concluding the debate on the 84 points, he takes up a very sustained examination of the disciples of Lonkā, the founder of the Sthānakavāsi (a Svetambara sub sect) movement, who rejected image worship and all rituals connected with them. This deinonstrates how the Digambaras and Svetāmbaras could share certain concerns (such as temple rituals) and join hands in combating reform movements initiated by Lonkā (circa 1475). Towards the end of the text our author in a casual manner refers to the rise of a subsect of the Sthānakavāsis, under the leadership by Muni Bhīkhanji (1726-1803), the founder of the modern day Terāpantha, centered at Ladnu near Jodhpur in Rajasthan. This gives us the possible date of our work to be no earlier than 1800.
Currently I am preparing a romanized text (100 typed pages) of this Hindi manuscript and an English translation, together with annotations with reference to the works of Upādhyāya Yashovijaya and Meghavijaya.
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