Jain Journal 1969 04

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

Page 19

JAINISM IN MYSORE
Bhadrabahu, the last śruta-kevali, is, from the view point of Jaina history, a most important figure. Born of a Brahmin priest, the saint was destined to play a great part in the religious history of India. His father was a Brahmin, Somasarma by name. From an inspection of the child's horoscope, the father perceived that he would become a great upholder of the Jaina faith and so named him Bhadrabahu. The child was in due course brought up in the Jaina faith in the house of Aksasravaka. Through the instructions of this svami and other śruta-kevalis, the boy soon acquired a knowledge of the four great branches of learning. Eventually, with the consent of his parents, he took dikṣā and by the practice of jnana, dhyāna, tapas and samyama, became an acarya. It was this acarya that, during the days of Candragupta Maurya, led a great migration to South India, so important and fruitful of consequences. The main incidents regarding the advent of this Jaina sage into Mysore are graphically narrated in Sravana Belgola Inscription No. 1. The story is told that Bhadrabahusvami "who by virtue of severe penance had acquired the essence of knowledge, having, by his power of discerning the past, present and future, foretold in Ujjain, a period of twelve years of dire calamity and famine, the whole of the samgha living in the northern regions took their way to the south". The Jaina traditions of the country not only make mention of this fact but also give a graphic account of the meeting of Bhadrabahu and Candragupta Maurya in the court of the latter at Pataliputra. Having had during the previous night sixteen dreams, Candragupta communicated them to Bhadrabahu. The last of the dreams was of the approach of a twelve-headed serpent which Bhadrabahu interpreted to mean the approach of twelve years of dire calamity and famine. As foretold by him, a terrible famine broke out in the country. The Mauryan emperor, abdicating his throne in favour of his son Simhasena, took dikṣā and joined Bhadrabahu who collecting a body of twelve thousand disciples, started on a grand exodus towards the south. In their march southward, the śruta-kevali had a strange perception that he would die and at once ordered a halt on "the mountain of a populous country completely filled with the increase of people, money, gold, grain, cow, buffaloes and goats, called Katavapra." He then gave upadeśa to one Visakhamuni and entrusted the disciples to his care, sending them on under his guidance further south to the