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KUVALAYAMALA
UDDYOTANA SURI
The Kuvalayamālā is a Prakrit campu written by Uddyotana Suri in 779 A.D. Though it was long known in manuscript form, the Prakrit text was first published with various readings in 1959 in the Singhi Jaina Series by Dr. A. N. Upadhye. Subsequently the Kuvalayamālā-kathāsamkṣepa of Ratnaprabha Suri was issued in 1961 with a short preface by the same editor. Now appears introduction, above noted kathā-samkşepa, notes, etc. as part two of the previous volume. Scholars of Indology will no doubt welcome this second volume with Dr. Upadhye's comprehensive notes and introduction. It has filled up a great gap in the study of Prakrit literature.
Uddyotana Suri was a writer of very keen observation gifted with the same pictorial memory as Bana and his knowledge of men and matter was of a wide character as shown by the description of the Kuvalayamālā. If Dr. Jacobi in the preface to the edition of Haribhadra Suri's Samarāiccakahā wrote that it gives 'a picture of Indian life in the 8th century which the antiquarian may study with profit', this might be said with even greater force of the work of Haribhadra's disciple Uddyotana. From the purely literary point of view, it is one of the great masterpieces of the Jaina kathanaka literature.
Jain Education International
Samarāiccakahā, as is well-known, is centred round the motif of karman and transmigration; the story follows the fates of two jivas through nine births. Uddyotana had deliberately outdone his Master by increasing the number of jivas, whom we accompany through the vicissitudes of a number of births, to five. Below we give for the benefit of our readers the story as condensed by Dr. Upadhye. It centres round the acquisition of samyaktva in which friends carry out their mutual obligations and attain nirvana.
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