Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 82

(LXV)
converted such great kings as Āma, defeated such learned scholars as Vardhanakuñjara and made even such poets and sanyasins as Vākpati abjure their faith and become Jains, when they were on the point of death...The story is told as if there were no connection between Vākpati and his friend and patron Yasovarma, the great King of Kanauj and father of Ama, although it is that King whom he has eulogised in his poem and whose achievements he has celebrated... All the credit that the Jain stories have a right to claim is, that king Ama was, perhaps, the son of Yasovarma and was known to have been one who favoured Bappabhatti... He also favoured the Jains, that the poet Vakpati was known to them, that his works were read and admired by them and that he was believed to have lived about, not at, the time of Bappabhatti.
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The detailed discussion given above regarding the Jain notices of Vākpatirāja and incidentally about his patron King Yasovarman clearly prove how unreliable and biased they are and therefore not very helpful from the historical point of view. In their enthusiasm to glorify the Jain faith, every distinguished personality of repute in Hindu mythology or Indian history has been dragged and twisted by the Jain writers in the network of their stories and very clever and ingenious attempts have been made by them to show how, coming under the influence of great Jain teachers, they ultimately succumbed and got converted to the Jain Faith, abandoning their previous allegiance to their earlier religion. The great writer, Vimalasūri, for instance, in his Pauma-cariya accused the Poet Valmiki as a big fraud, who gives a pack of lies in his Rāmāyaṇa and in his zeal for Jainism has depicted the hero Padma i. e. Rāma as a pious Jaina layman, finally attaining perfect knowledge and entering
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