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Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
The Caritas and Prabandhas generally cannot be relied upon as revealers of absolute historical truth, since their tendency is the supply of convenient devotional reading matter, which, though based on a certain tradition re historical events and characters, is, after all, fiction to some extent. In the present case, it is, therefore, a priori possible that Ambada's restoration has been post-dated, so as to allow of its being glorified by accounts of the illustrious presence of Kumārapāla and his Guru. Devabhadra's above statement re his stay in 'Amadatta's Mandira' in V.S. 1168 even raises this assumption to something like a certainty, provided it can be admitted that 'Amadatta' is another of the many variants in which Ambada's name has been handed down, to mention only 'Amrabhata', 'Ambhata', 'Amradeva', 'Ambāka', 'Ambaḍa', 'Amaḍa', 'Ambā'.
It may be objected that the 'Amadatta' in whose 'Mandira' Devabhadra Sūri stayed, must not be separated from the 'Amadatta' mentioned in st. 29 of Dharmaghosa Sūri's 'Śatruñjaya-kalpa’5o (composed prior to V.S. 1357, when the poet died) and in st. 35 of Jinaprabha Suri's poem of the same names1 (V.S. 1389 ), in both of which works this name occurs along with the names of Samprati, Vikramaditya, Sātavāhana, Pādalipta and Vāgbhața, all mentioned as restorers of Śatruñjaya. Jinaprabha Sūri gives the name ‘Amadatta' combined with 'Padalipta' to a dvandva-compound, which he treats not as a Dual, but as a Plural, thus indicating that he considered 'Amadatta' as two separate names, viz., ‘Āma' and ‘Datta'. Modern interpreters accordingly explain ‘Amadatta' as the name of king Ama or Nāgāvaloka of Kanyakubja (who died in V.S. 890 and is known as a devout Jaina and Bappabhaṭṭi Sūri's patron) plus that of 'Datta', a future Patriarch, whose existence the Agamas predict (Samavāyānga-sūtra 153 )! Devabhadra's reference, however, suggests that the 'Amadatta' who gave his name to the temple of Broach, must have been somebody who lived in the past and probably built or re-built that temple. Most likely the same person built or re-built temples at Śatruñjaya. That our Ambaḍa is that very person,
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