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Ancient Jaina Hymns
347
The subsequent stanzas, 22-36, glorify the Jaina Religion in general, and express the poet's firm belief in the sublime teaching of the Tīrthankara as the means by which he hopes to be rescued from the terrifying ocean of re-births, and to attain final beatitude.
Then his thoughts revert to Muni Suvrata's shrine at Broach, whose sacredness he extolls in st. 37-39 under both the ancient names, ‘Aśvāvabodha' as the general name of the Tīrtha, and *Śakunikā-vihāra' as that of the temple24. Of great interest are the attributes ‘pravara-mahimă”, i.e., “being of outstanding grandeur', applied to the whole Tīrtha, as well as 'tatra-saṁsthā', i.e., 'standing there' ( viz., at Aśvāvabodha ) applied to the temple, and 'guru-parivrdhādhisthita-supratiştha', i.e., 'big, massive, attended and protected by divine power, and well founded', applied to the surrounding wall, the dwellers within the precincts of which are not robbed even by cruel thieves !' This sounds like irony nowadays, when the ancient place of pilgrimage no longer exists, and its very site can only be inferred ! Yet it shows that the poet cannot have had the modern Muni Suvrata Temple in view, which is only a small, unimpressive building, standing in a row of houses, sandwiched between them, without any surrounding space, not to speak of a big and massive' wall. The poem can only have been composed at a time when Sakunikā-vihāra was an impressive stone building and a renowned Jaina place of pilgrimage. Since the poem itself is anonymous and undated, it will be necessary to define that period more precisely so as to ascertain the time of its composition. What happened to Aśvāvabodha and Sakunikā-vihāra after its restoration by Sudarśana ?
Literature is full of accounts of its existence, its sanctity and popularity, and of its being restored and embellished over and again by kings and ministers25. Some of those accounts lead back into mythological darkness, so that it is not easy to draw a sharp line between legend and history. According to a summary of the history of the shrine, given in the Prabhāvaka-carita?“, Aśvāvabodha had
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