Jain Journal 1969 04

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

Page 30

JAINISM IN ANDHRA PRADESA
The gana of Bhadrabahu was also known as the Sarasvati gaccha or the Valatkara gaņa in honour of the miracle achieved by Kondakundacarya, fourth descendant pupil of the line of Bhadrabahu. Guptigupta, Maghanandi and Jinacandra were three of his successors, the fourth being Kondakunda. This last one was believed to have compelled (and hence 'valatkara') a stone Sarasvati to speak! Kondakunda hailed from the borders of Andhra, having lived most of his life at Konakondla, an ancient village near Guntakal. P. B. Desai mentions two statements, one from the Srutāvatara and another from the Bastihalli inscription, saying that Kondakundacarya, whose secular name was Padma, hailed from Kondakunda, the old name of Konakondla. Maghanandi, a Jaina ācārya was the founder of the Nandi gaccha or gana and Padma, who belonged to that group was called Padmanandi and later 'Kondakundacarya'. He is famous as the earliest of the south Indian ācāryas and his spiritual stature was comparable to the physical stature of Gomata of Sravana Belgola. He was the greatest of the exponents of the ātmatatva and wrote great many canonical works like the Samayasāra, Pañcāstikāya, Pravacanasāra, etc. Prof. A. Chakravarti maintains in his introduction to Pañcāstikāya that the Tirukkural was also written by Padmanandi. His miracle with a stone Sarvasvati made him a gañadhara, the founder of the so-called 'Valātkāra gaña'. He is said to have wandered the country disputing with scholars of other religions and it was he who introduced this militant aspect in discourses for the first time in south Indian Jainism and most probably it was this fact and not his distorted neck (vakragiva) that gave his group the name vakragaccha. He was hailed as the destroyer of the dandas and was also known as Elacarya. He was even deified and made to go at a height of five inches above the ground. Practically every line of Jaina teachers of south India claimed to have belonged to the lineage of Kondakundacarya. This was indeed a unique honour bestowed on a south Indian acarya, one who belonged to the indigenous deši gaņa.
He lived in the first century A.D. We cannot today expect to see any sculpture of his period in Konakondla. There is only a spacious natural cave capable of seating fifty disciples under its flat and horizontal rock roof and also several other recesses under huge boulders on the hill.