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APRIL, 1969
fullest advantage was taken by Hemacandra. The great success of Hemacandra was partly due to the reputation he enjoyed deservedly as the most learned man of his time, but his influence on Kumarapala must have been to a great extent due to his nobility of character which was free from any narrow bigotry that so often mars the nature of a sectarian preacher. The calm detachment, which came to him naturally in his fervent search for the absolute, raised him far above the level of his contemporaries-and indeed above the level of most of the preachers of any time, and was, we believe, the determining factor in not only winning over Kumarapala but in contributing to the faith he professed, a dynamic force which has left its indelible stamp in this country till now.
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As for Kumarapala, most probably like Harsavardhana, while not ceasing to be a Hindu, he favoured and actively promoted the spread of another religion, in his case Jainism. Of all the extraordinary measures which Kumarapala is said to have enforced, only the one prohibiting slaughter can be called peculiarly Jaina; the rest, such as prohibition of gambling, drinking, and certain other vices have been prescribed on ethical grounds by all religions of all times. However, if Kumarapala issued any edict to enforce the prohibition of slaughter and the other vices in his realm, none has yet been discovered; the two known inscriptions of his reign which forbid the killing of animals on certain days were issued by his feudatories. One of these inscriptions records an order by Girijadevi, the mahārājñi of Punapaksadeva, prohibiting slaughter of animals on the 11th, 14th, and the 15th days of both the fortnights that are the Jaina holy days; on the sacred day of the new moon even the potters of the city were forbidden to burn their pots. The violation of this order was to be punished with fines. The other inscription forbade slaughter on the 8th, 11th, and the 14th day of both the fortnights and was issued by the feudatory Alhanadeva in V.S. 1209; the punishment for violation of this order was 5 drammas for an ordinary offender and 1 dramma only if the offender belonged to the royal family. From this it would seem that prohibition of slaughter was a partial measure so far as the feudatories were concerned. But in the Dvyāśraya, Hemacandra positively states that even the (Hindu) gods could not be offered any animal sacrifice. This statement of Hemacandra is corroborated by the later chroniclers, and if their description of the number of animals sacrificed on the occasion of the Durgapuja bears any relation to truth, it was just as well that Hemacandra had this barbarous orgy of slaughter stopped. However, Hemacandra further adds that even hunters and fowlers were forbidden their professions, so that in the reign of Kumarapala 'acts of cruelty were no more', and the butchers received as compensations for the loss of their trade
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