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Taran Taran who is said to have been born in 1448 A.D. at Puhpavati (Pushpavati) another name for Bilahri in Katni Tahsil of Jabalpur district to his Parwar parents. His father Garha Sah retired to Semalkheri near Sironj in the district of Vidisha where Taran was brought up in the house of his maternal uncle. This was the Age of Bhattarakas among Digambar Jains and from the biographical dates of Taran Taran available to us, he was a contemporary of Bhattarak Yashahakirti of the Mulasangha, Taran Taran, however, led a life of isolation from the so-called Bhattarakas who had fallen from the ideals of the ancient munis and had forsaken the rigours of their discipline. Their services to Jain Culture were none too negligible for they promoted the cause of idol making, temple building and manuscripts copying but their life of growing comfort and ease and accumulation of riches had made them indistinguishable from priests for all practical purposes. For instead of moving about constantly, they mostly resided in Chaityalayas and Upasras practising tantra and mantra besides ayurveda and jyotisha. Even the learned among them like Yashahakirti held narrow and reactionary ideas of caste and sex inferiority of sudras and women. Such ideas and practices must have been an anathema to a radical thinker like Taran Taran who, far from conforming to them, took to a life of nude asceticism and practised austerities in forest resorts like Semalkheri and Sukha (Damoh district), besides village Rakh, now called Mallhargarh in Guna district where he passed the best years of his fruitful life attended to by his disciples of all castes and creeds including Muslims among whom two names are prominent- those of Luqman and Ruia Raman who is supposed to have been a cotton ginner or pinjara by profession.
Taran Taran was a junior contemporary of Lonkasah of Gujarat and presumably took inspiration from him. Taran Taran has left a dozen books of verse in which he has propounded the philosophy of 'anekant' and 'syadvad' emphasizing the importance of atma as paramatma in the making. There was no place for idol worship in his scheme of religious practice but he refrained from launching a direct attack on the idolatory practiced commonly by the Jain shravakas or householders. The language of his books is a strange mixture of Samskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsa and Deshi. A collection of these compositions is available in print.
Taran Taran breathed his last at the age of sixty seven and his samadhi called Nasiyaji is the chief centre of Taranpanthi community from where radiates the ideology of this greatest saint of the Digambar Parwars. Unfortunately there was no scholar among his disciples who could take up the work of organization of the panth which even today finds itself indebted to persons outside its fold for the work of editing and publishing of and commenting on Taran bani. As far as the Saint Taran Taran himself is concerned, he deserves to be bracketted with Lonkasah and Kabir, his Shvetambar and Vaishnava counterparts.
It may not be supposed from the above account of a nonworshipper of idols that idol worship in Chanderi-Damoh had declined among the Jains. On the
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