Indian Antiquary Vol 40

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 228

214
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(AUGUST, 1911.
in almost the same way as Gautama Buddha, we have no less an authority than the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang of the seventh century A, D. He says:-"The Jainas have built a temple of the Gods. The sectaries, that freqnent it, submit themselves to strict austerity, day and night they manifest the most ardent zeal without taking an instant's rest. The law that has been set forth by the founder of this sect has been largely appropriated from the Buddhist books on which it is guided in establishing its precepts and rules. The more aged of the sectaries bear the name of Bhikshas ; the younger they call Chamis (Sramaņa) In their observances and religious exercises, they follow almost entirely the rule of the Sramaņas. The statue of their divine master resembles by a sort of usurpation that of ju lai (the Tathagatha); it only differs in costume; its marks of beanty (Mahápurusha-lakshanáni) are exactly the same." 16 This passage, from the writings of the Chinese traveller, clearly shows that the two sects of the Jainas and the Banddhas should be regarded as branches of one and the same. Curiously enough the Singhalese Baddhists recognise twenty-four Buddhas prior to Gautams, and this number is exactly the same as that of the Tirtham karas of the Jainas. Here, then, is an additional ground for the belief that the Gautama of the Jainas and of the Bauddhas is the same person. As there is very little difference between the two sects, and as Buddha himself appears to have been the disciple of the Jaina Mahavira, it can be easily gathered that the two faiths flourished side by side for centuries, some people professing to be the followers of Gautama Buddha, while others adbered to the original Jains creed.
The Maurya emperor Chandragupta is believed to have spent the latter part of his life in southern India, having settled himself at Sravana Belgola in the Mysore State. He is said to have accompanied the great Jaina teacher Bhadrabâhu, whose disciple he was, in his migration to the Dekkan. Bhadrababu with a number of followers went to the Pun-nadu country, where he died. Though the account of Chandragupta's settlement in the Mysore territory cannot be asserted authoritatively yet it may be noted that the story receives some strength from the discovery of the rock-cut edict of Asoka at Siddhapura alluded to above. The edict establishes beyond question that the dominion of the Mauryas extended so far south. At the end of the 2nd century A. D., the Jaiva priest Simhanandi settled himself in another part of Mysore. The princes Dad ga and Madhava, belonging to the solar race, are said to have followed this priest, and ruled the kingdom whose capital was Koļâla (see pago 9, Mysore and Coorg in the Imperial Gazetteer Volumes.)
Though the names of those kings who adopted Buddhism in southern India bas not come down to us, we have on record that many of those were Jainas. Some of the kings of the Pallavas of Káñchi, and a few of those of the Pandya country, not to say of the western Châlukyas, the Gaigas and Rashtrakūtas, were staunch Jainas, and one or two even went the length of persecuting other religionists-a very rare thing in Indian history. It is this attitude in the rulers that appears to have been one of the causes for the application of the destructive axe at the root of these religions. We know from the inscriptions of the western Châlukya kings, Palakesin II., Vijayaditya and Vikramaditya II., that they favoured the Jaina faith by executing repairs to temples and granting villages to them. 17 The Pallava king, Mabendravarman, was an avowed Jaina in the earlier part of his reign. The early kings of the Rashtrakůțas were Jainas, and the records of Amoghavarsha I., dated in Saks years 765, 775 and 799, register provisions made for Buddhist communities by his feudatories 18 ; but the king himself was a Jaina king, a disciple of the famous teacher Jinasena.
The spread of the Jaina faith in southern India belongs in no small measure to Samantabhadra, who is said to have visited Kañcbî, to Akalanka who is credited with having defeated several Buddhists in disputation, to Vidyananda and Måņikyananda, whose contributions to Jaina liters ture, like those of their two predecessors, are not few; to Prabhachandra, the pupil of Akalanka, who appears to have lived prior to A.D. 750 ; to Jinasena, the preceptor of the Rashtrakata king
18 Ibid, Vol. II., p. 16.
16 The views expressed in this paragraph will hardly be countenanced by the scholars of the present dayD. R. B. 11 Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. I., Part II., p. 191.
13 Ibid., pp. 101-405.