Jain Journal 1997 10

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

Page 14

MUKHERJEE THE KALAKACHARYA KATHANAKA
No doubt, as Konow49 and Jayaswal contended, some Jaina treatises including the Pattavalis1 and the Theravali of Merutunga52 put the rule of the Sakas in Ujjayini before the beginning of the Vikrama Era. 53 However, they also place nabhovahana and Gardabhilla before the Sakas, 54 and think that Nabhovahana was the same as Nahapāna of coins and inscriptions. The identification is made virtually certain by the facts that another Jaina work describes the protracted struggle between a Satavahana king and Nahavahana55. that the latter name may be variant of the name Nabhovahana, and that the only ruler known to have been involved in such a war and to have borne a name almost similar to that of Nabhovaha was Nahapana. But this Nahapāna cannot have ruled before the 1st century A.D.56 This at once reveals the weakness of the relevant portions of the works on which Konow and Jayaswal depended. Hence it must be admitted that no reliable source testifies to Saka rule in Ujjayini in the 1st century B.C.
It appears that, of the different features of the Kalaka story, only those concerning with or alluding to the existence of Śaka colony on the western bank of the lower Indus, the Parthian hegemony over the same region, and the activities of the Sakas in Surashtra (in the 1st century B.C.?), can be taken as his historical facts. It is doubtful whether any Jaina teacher called Kālaka was in any way associated with the Saka activities in Surashtra. We can only admit that such an association was believed in by the time the story had grown up around the core of hard facts. When it was given literary form it was evidently altered, expanded and historically vitiated, and thus later characters57, such as Vairisimha, etc, were incorporated in it.
49. JBBRAS, vol, XVI, pp. 234f.
50. Indian Antiquary, Vol II, pp. 362-363; JBORS, Vol, XVI p. 234.
51. JBBRAS, os, vol, IX. p. 148.
45
52. See also Cunningham, Numismatic Chronicle, 1888, p. 232.
53. See IA. Vol. II, pp. 362-363, where Prakrit gāthās from the works of Merutunga, Dharmasagar and Jaivijagani are quoted.
54. Srimad Bhadrabahusvāmi-pranita-Nityuktiyukta-bhashyakalita-ŚrimadHaribhadrasuri Suttritavritta-parivaritam Srimad Avasyakasütrasyottarardham, parvabhagai (edited by the Agamodaya Samiti) folios 712
713.
55. The name nahapana itself could easily be corrupted in the Indian sources into Nahavana, etc.
56. See B N, Mukherjee, op. cit., book III, ch, I. In this connection see also the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 1953, pp. 30-40.
57. This critical appraisal of the contents of the Kalaka story indicates that
Dr S K. Chattopadhyay is wrong in thinking that the legend is wholly unhistorical (S. Chattopadhyay, Early History of Northern India, p. 56).