Jain Thought and Culture

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

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Jain Thought and Culture
Difference in Religion of Chanakya and Kautilya :
The greatest advantage of the theory of the separate indentities of Kaulilya and Chanakya is that it makes it possible for us to utilize the material contained in the Buddhist and Jain versions of the Chanakya legend for the re-construction of the history of the early Maurya period Here we shall not go into its details and confine ourselves to the early life and religion of Chanakya, the Prime Minister of Chandragupla Maurya, for it would additionally prove that Kautilya and Chanakya were two separate individuals
The Buddhist version of the Chanakya legend is mainly known from the Cylonese chronicle Mahavamsa According to it is he was a learned Brahmana of Taxila He had a grudge against the last Nanda who had publicly insulted him He, therefore, vowed to destroy the Nanda dynasty and succeeded in his mission fully He placed Chandragupta Maurya on the throne of Magadha and became his minister The basic outline of the Jain versions of the Chanakya katha agree with the Buddhist version though there are some significant differences also According to CD Chatterjee,44 the secular works of the Jains in Prakrit and Sanskrit present at least two streams of traditions relating to Chanakya and Chandragupta, of which one is special to the commentaries on the Avassaya and the Uttarajjhayana and the other to the Jain Katha literature The germs of these two traditions are traced in the Nujjuttıs The first occurrence of the Chanakya-Chandragupta tradılion is very probably in the Chunni (Churni) on the Avassaya Nujutlı on the basis of which some time between 740 and 770 AD Haribhadrasuri wrote an elaborate story of Chanakya and Chandragupta in his Avasyakasutra Vritti Nearly three centuries later Devendragani wrote out the story afresh in his commentary on the Uttarajjhayana. His work is popularly known as the Sukhbodha Another version of this story in meterial Sanskrit is found in the Parisista parvan of Hemachandra composed in about 1165 A D
The story of the early life of Chanakya, as known from these Jain works,45 informs us that he was born in the Golla Vishaya (Gollavisae) 46 His father Chanaka was a Brahmana by birth but a
44 B C Law l'olume, pp 607 ff 45 Cf Chatterjee, CD, op cit 46 It is quite possible that Taxila to which, according to the Buddhist tradition, Chanakya belonged was situated in the Golla District