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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[Vol. XXVII The date cited above is not verifiable as the week-day is not mentioned. However, wo may note that the Saka year was current, and thus the specified lithi would correspond to 1658 A.C., November 9, Thursday.
In order to understand the importance of these two teachers and their identification, we have to probe into the religious and political history of this region as gathered from other sources. During the period of the 14th to 17th century A. C., there flourished in the southern parts of the North Kanara District and the adjoining tract four principalities, viz., Nagire, Hāļuvalli or Sangitapura, Bifigit and Sonda. The rulers of these chiefdoms came under the powerful influence of Jainism and the Jaina teachers who were responsible for this influence belonged to a particular monastic order. Two inscriptions found in the dilapidated Ratnatraya Basadi (1.e., Jaina temple) at Biligi in the Biddapur taluk of the district furnish valuable information about these monks.
There flourished an erudite Jaina teacher named Charukirti Pandita who founded a monastery at Sravana Belgoļa. He bore the titles, Rāya-rājaguru, Mandalāchārya, Mahävädaadidi buara, Rāya-vädi-Pitamaha, Sakala-vidvajjana-chakravarti and Ballalaräya-jivarakshä-pälaka. This teacher might have lived in the early part of the 12th century A .C., since, according to some inscriptions from Sravana Belgola, he earned the last-mentioned title by saving the life of the HoyBala king Ballála I (1100-1106 A. C.). This teacher belonged to the Dēsiya gana and Pustaks gachchha of the Müla sangha. The subsequent teachers who were connected with the spiritual heritage of this preceptor adopted these titles in their prabasti. Srutakirti was a later descendant in the monastic lineage of Charukirti Pandita. The spiritual succession of Srutakirti as recounted in inscription No. I in the Ratnatraya Basadi at Biligi is as follows:
Srutakirti I
Vijayakirti I Srutakirti II
Vijayakarti II
Chandraprabha
Akalanka 1 Vijayakirti III Akalanka II
Bhattákalanka The earliest date mentioning the last named teacher, Bhattākalanka, as known from the above opigraph is Saka 1510 or 1587 A. O. So on a modest caloulation of about 25 years per generation we can place Srutakirti I approximately in the beginning of the 15th century A.C. It may be
This name is spelt - Biligi and Bilagi alao and Sanskritised into Svätapyra.
• I copied these epigraphs privately in 1988 and the sbove account of their contents is based on my own readings of their texts. These records have been published with many flaws in 1940, October-November issue of the Kannada journal Sarana Sahitys whose editor states that he copied them in 1926. Their summaries have boon published with some mistakes in the Annual Report on Kannada Research for 1939-40, No. 88, 89. The Inte B. Narsimhachar referred to one of those inscriptions in his sooount of Bhawakalanka based on ita copy found the Xadre Museum, Karufaka Kavicharito, Vol. II, p. 348. But it is now seen that thot copy must have been defootve in parte.
Kard tabo Sabdanuddiana (Bibliothoon Carnation, 1923), Introduction, p. 6; Brligi Ratnatraya Bandi inscription No. I.
