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THE JAINA GAZETTE. •consecrated by some of the holiest traditions and tenderest memories of their faith. This picturesque rock on an elevated tableland was, as a thousand years' old tradition has it, the scene where the venerable Bhagavan Srutakevali Bhadrabahu leading the first migration of the Jains to the Southern Peninsula broke his journey through the jungles and took up his abode, and tradition still points to the cave in which years after he passed away, in Sallekhana, leaving his footprints on the rock. It was in this holy land, the Dakshina Kasi, the Benares of the South, that, as the same tradition has it. the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta, the fame of whose prowess turned away the invincible hosts of Alexander the Great, doffing the Emperor's for the ascetic's robe, nursed his master, the Srutakevali, in his last moments and worshipped his footprints. Since that day, many a royal prince of the South and many a holy monk from the North have vowed themselves to death by euthanasia, that Sallekhana which answers to the Samadhimarana of the Hindu Yogi.
Gommata's Spiritual Empire. This is also the holy spot sacred to the Muniswara Gommata. whom tradition represents to have been the younger brother of • Bharata, the eponymous Emperor of Bharatavarsha. The land of Mysore, therefore, symbolises Gommata's spiritual empire, as Bharatavarsha stands for the empire of his brother Bharata. For a thousand years has the Muniswara's Colossal Statue carved, it may be, out of a huge boulder on the rock and visible for miles around ruled over this scene unsurpassed in massive grandeur and sublimity of spiritual power by anything that the Egyptian or Assyrian monuments can show.
But Jainism not only found a second birth-place and home in Mysore, Jainism repaid the debt. For Jainism, if it did not create our Kannada literature, inspired some of the noblest masterpieces of that literature in its early history; and Jaina learned men have ever since continued to render signal service to it.
Greatness of Jainism. No less memorable have been the services of Jainism to the evolution of India's spiritual and philosophical life. Jainisin has Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
