Jain Journal 1992 10

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

Page 44

86
JAIN JOURNAL
early times and Bhadrabahu accepted the hospitality of the then king. Bhadrababu migrated from the North to the South, but Kundakunda was the son of the soil. Guntakal is an important Railway Junction in modern Andhra Pradesh. Near it is the town of Kundakunda in the District of Anantapur. This is the birthplace of Kundakundācārya. In the days of the Ācārya, this entire area was called Pidat Nadu, referred to above. Indeed, Andhra Pradesh was carved out after 1950 from what was formerly Madras Presidency, and still earlier the greater Tamil Nadu.
125 kilometres from the Madras City, and eight kilometres from Vandvasi Tehsil is Ponnurmalai. On a hillock here, there are the footprints of Kundakundācārya. Below the footprints is inscrbed :
dakșiņa dese malaye hemagrăme munirmahātmāsīt helätcáryo nämnă dravila gaņādhiśvaro dhimän
Translated in English it means-"In the south hill range, there is nestled a village called Hemagrāma (Ponnur). In this village lived the wise and learned Elācārya, the leader of an Order of Saints." Blacārya is the other name of Kundakundācărya.
During his itineraries, Kundakundācārya also visited Mylapore, on the sea.coast, very near Madras. It is here that he wrote the great Tamil treatise Tirukkural. Tirukkural is regarded as Tamil Veda. It is a great treatise on polity, morality and ethics. It was then a pract that anybody who wrote a treatise had to read it out to his Order to get their approval and sanction Kundakundăcārya was a Digambar naked Sadhu and he could not personally appear and read out the treatise before the conclave. So he sent his disciple Tiruvulla Nainar to officiate for him. Tiruvulla Nainar took Tirukkural to Madurai and there he read out and explained the importance of the treatise to the conclave of Saints gathered there. The Saints mistook him for the author. And that is how Tirukkural came to be associated with Tiruvulla Nainar. The mistake in the identity of the author continues till today. Tirukkural has been translated in Hindi by Govinda Rai Sastri and printed and published by Kundakunda Bharati, Special Institutional Area, New Delhi. Between January, 1988 and December, 1992, this Hindi version of Tirukkural has had four editions. But in
2 Foot-prints are carved out at the place where the person concerned breathed his
last.