Jain Journal 1996 01

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

Page 12

JAIN JOURNAL
Vol. XXX
No.3 January
1996
PUŅYAKUŚALA'S INDEBTEDNESS TO MĀGHA
DR SATYA VRAT
As discussed elsewhere?, the Trişaşțisalākāpuruşacarita (TȘŚPc.) of Hemacandra forms the basis of Punyakusala's Bharatabāhubalimahākāvya (BBM.)2 which seeks to detail in eighteen cantos, a brief episode from the life of Bharata, the first Cakravartin celebrated in the Jaina tradition, with such poetic trappings as the mahākāvya admits with profusion, though it has occasionally drawn upon the Adipurāna as well. To be sure, the two burly texts represent respectively the Svetāmbara and Digambasra versions of the fascinating story of Bharata's fight with his refractory younger brother, Bāhubali and its resultant sublimation, with the heady combatants ultimately discarding worldly glory that driven them to the suicidal course of deadly confrontation. While in the conception of his story Punyakusala's indebtedness to the aforesaid Purānas is beyond question, in its execution he seems to follow with a measure of tenacity, the sequence of Māgha's poem which is known to have exercised powerful influence on the successive generation of Sanskrit poets. The quantum of debt that Punyakusala owes to the author of the
alavadha can be gauged from the fact that it extends to both the substantial and the peripheral.
In imitation of Māgha, Punyakusala has plunged headlong in the story without so much as observing the formality of the benediction. The two poems thus concur in having what is known in the jargon of the poeticians as the vastunirdeśātmaka type of mangalācarana. The Sisupälavadha has earned the sobriquet of śryankakāvya, because of its deliberate use of the auspicious word Sri in the last verse of each canto. By skilfully interweaving the phrase punyodaya in tl concluding verse of each canto, Punyakusala has not only respected the tradition, but has also thereby made a veiled reference to his name, which is otherwise conspicuous by its absence in the poem. The Śišupālavadha is marked in its beginning by Nārada's descent
heavens which has prompted the author into a bout of rich 1. SATYA VRAT: Studies in Jaina Sanskrit Literature, Delhi, 1994, pp. 168-175. 2. Jaina Vishwa Bharati, Ladnun, 1974. 3. For example - kşitipati-bhavanamyātyanta punyodayādhyam BBM I. 79.