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JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXI, No. 1. July 1996 Arikesari, on how best to govern their kingdoms" is no certainty, but this book has cerainly found a place in the Indian niti literature,44 and Somadeva "has earned his place in the history of Indian political thought by adhering to the principles of Kautilya, and in the history of international political thought by deifying the state.45
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It is perhaps this philosophy and attitude towards the State which sets Somadeva apart from other Jaina thinkers and writers on polity, e.g., Jinasena46 and his disciple Gunabhadra who completed his master's Adipurāna,47 and Hemacandra, the author of Laghvar hanniti.48
Though the Adipurāṇa has recently received some attention at the hands of scholars.49 particularly the legend of Rṣabha, Bharata and Bahubali, it remains relatively unexplored for its political philosophy even though it offers "a far richer source for the understanding of the Jain perception of kingship".50
The importance of Adipurāna emanates from the 'fact', as related by Jinasena, that "it is the first and only purana, to be distinguished from the false Hindu texts which teach violence".51 Jinasena claims 44. Edited with a Hindi translation by Kailash Chandra Shastri, Bharatiya Jñanapitha, Varanasi, 1964; it is also included in the Śrāvakācāra Sangraha, tr. by Hiralal Siddhāntālaṁkāra, Sholapur, 1976. 45. Saletore, p. 1369.
46. Cf., for example, Beni Prasad's statement: "To the student of government theory, the (Jaina) Sūtras as a whole are rather disappointing" (p. 229), "few of them make any fresh contribution to political thought" (p. 328). "There is, however, one Jaina work in Sūtra form which deserves detailed notice. In the tenth century, Somadeva Sūri summed up the current political wisdom in a remarkable book called the 'Nectar of Political Sayings'. In spite of the Sutra form the very acme of concision, Somadeva has managed to combine extreme brevity with considerable perspicacity of expression" (TGAI, p. 229).
47. Saletore, AIPT, pp. 340-1.
48. "Jinasena lived from about 758 A.D. to about 848 A.D. Both he and Gunabhadra spent most of their time in Maharastra and Karnataka" (Beni Prasad, p. 221).
49. Acārya Jinasenakṛta Adipurana, text with Hindi commentary by Pandit Pannalal Jain. 2 vols. Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanapitha, 1963. A previous translation was made available by Lala Ram Jaina in Syādvāda Granthamālā Series, No. 4.
50. Ahmedabad, 1906. Also known as 'Abridgement of the science of Polity of the Blessed One' (Ghoshal, 1959, p. 456).
51. See, for example, George Ralph Strohl's doctoral dissertation, The Image of the hero in Jainism: Rṣabha, Bharata and Bahubali in the Adipurāṇa of Jinasena', University of Chicago, 1984.
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