Introducing Jainism

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 33

26
INTRODUCING JAINISM
composed in 779 A.D. At the beginning of his romance Uddyotana tells us the following story.47
"In the northern part of India there was a town called Pavvaiyā close to the river Chandrabhāgā, which was the capital of the Yavana king Toramāna. The spiritual preceptor of this king was one Harigupta of the Gupta family. One of his pupils was Devagupta, a royal scion of the Gupta dynasty, who, in turn, had a pupil called Sivachandra, bearing the title Mahattara. In the course of his wanderings, Sivachandra took up his residence at Bhinnamāla, otherwise known as: Śrīmāla. One of his pupils was the far-famed Yakshadatta, while a band of his other pupils is represented as converting the whole of Gujrāt to Jainism by their wanderings and preachings. One of his pupils was Vatteśvara, who caused a magnificent temple of the Jina to be constructed in the town of Ākāśavapra. He had a pupil Tattvāchārya, who was the teacher of Uddyotana, the author of this work. Uddyotana imbibed the knowledge of the scriptures from Virabhadra while he learnt logic and other sciences from the famous scholar Haribhadra."
On this piece of information as gathered from the introductory portions of Kuvalayamālākahā, A.M. Ghatage48 comments:
"Though history does not help us in ascertaining who these Gupta kings were, and how far the Hūņa king Toramāṇa was a regular convert to Jainism, we may readily believe that men of standing and petty chieftains of those times patronised the Jain faith, and bands of wandering monks formed the chief agency of spreading the religion in different parts of Western India."
In the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. the Ganga Kings of Mysore were very much attracted to Jainism. In fact, the founder of the family was a disciple of a Jaina teacher called
47. Kuvalayamālākahā ed by A.N. Upadhye, Bhāratiya Vidyā
Bhavan, Bombay, 1949. The quotation is from Majumdar, ibid.,
III, p. 410f. 48. Majumdar, ibid., III, p. 411.