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JAINA LITERATURE IN TAMIL
the guru of Candragupta Maurya. That at the approach of a terrible famine of twelve years in the North, Bhadrabāhu led a whole Jaina Sangha towards the Deccan, that he was followed by his disciple Candragupta who abdicated his throne in favour of his son and that they came and settled for sometime in the Mysore region that Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta lost their lives on Candragiri at Sravaņa Beļagoļa and the rest migrated to the Tamil country are facts generally accepted by oriental scholars. But, as I mentioned elsewhere, this could not be taken as the first approach of the Jainas towards the South. That the migration to the South must have been conducted with a hope of
another Sanskrit work of the 15th century, the Munivamšābhyudaya of Cidānandakavi, a Kannada work of the 17th century and the Rājāvasikathe of Dēvacandra, another Kannada work of the 19th century contain variant versions of this tradition. Some inscriptions in Sravanabeļagola (Hassan District, Karnataka State), ranging in date from the 7th to the 15th centuries A.D. (Ep. carn., Vol. II, Nos. 1, 31, 67, 166 and 258) and two 10th century inscriptions from the vicinity of Srirangapatna (Ep. Carn., Vol. III, Sr. 147-48) contain references either to the migration of Bhadrabāhu to the South or to him and Candragupta as master and disciple.
1 B. L. Rice: Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions (1909), pp. 3-9; R. Narasimhacharya : Ep. Carn., Vol. II (1923), p. 9; M. S. Ramaswami Ayyangar: Studies in South Indian Jainism (1922), part I, South Indian Jainism, pp. 19-24; P. B. Desai : Jainism in South India (1957), pp. 26-27. However, see Ind. Ant., Vol XXI, pp. 156 ff. and The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. II, The Age of Imperial Unity (1951) where this tradition is held to be unacceptable.
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