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COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF JAINISM
ful to him for giving some important information in a classified manner,
Amaracandra, the friend of Arisimha, was looked upon as a great poet by his contemporaries and also by the later writers. He belonged to the Vāyaļa gaccha (Vāyada, being the name of a place, 15 miles North-West of Anahilapura). It has further been suggested 168 that Amaracandra was probably a Brahmin, before he became a Jain sādhu; however, there is no definite evidence to support this contention. Rājasekhara, who has written a separate prabandha167. on this poet, has nowhere represented him as a Brahmin.
Two principal works of Amaracandra are the Bālabhārata and the Padmānandakāvya, The Balabhārata 158 is a summary of the Mahābhārata in 18 paryans and in this mahakāvya, the poet has praised Vyāsa, the original poet of the Great Epic, in every canto of every parvan. There are over
verses. He has concentrated on the story-part of the Mahābhārata and this explains why there is not much room, in his poem, for the didactic portions of the original epic. The Padmānanda Mahakāvya168, also called Jinendracarita has two recensions; the longer one, in 19 cantos, is called the Padmānanda Kavya and the shorter Jinendracarita180 has little over 1800 ślokas and is divided into 24 chapters on 24 Tirthankaras. The longer kavya is devoted exclusively to Ādinātha or Rshabha. It is described in the body of the poem (Book XVIII) as Vyshabhadevacaritābhidhāno granthaḥ. This kävya was composed, at the time of Visaladeva, and it was dedicated to minister Pampa, who was the patron of the poet. And this gentleman, like Amaracandra, belonged to a Vāyada merchant family. We further learn from the Praśasti of Padmānanda kāyya that Amaracandra had once defeated a Paņdita named Gauraguņa, in a debate held before Padma, who gave him a jayapatra in recognition of his feat161.
Vijayasenasūri162, of the Nāgendra gaccha, who was the guru of these two famous brothers, was also a writer and a man of immense scholarship. However, no separate work of
