Jainas in History of Indian Literature

Author(s): Jinvijay
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 29

14] JAINAS IN INDIAN LITERATURE The latter work has been continued by Prabhā candra and Pradyumnasūri (about 1275 A. D.) in the Prabhāvakacaritra, containing biographies of 22 Jaina teachers, amongst them Hemacandra. The Prabandhacintāmani of Merutunga (1306 A. D.) and the Prabandhakosa of Rājasekhara (1349 A. D.) contain numerous interesting anecdotes about the famous kings Vikramaditya, Silāditya and Bhoja and the poets & literary men supposed to have lived at their courts. Though of no real historical value at all, yet these anecdotes throw a flood of light on the life and manners of the time, especially the literary life at the courts of Indian princes.
Different from this more or less popular literature are the Kathās, more pretentious works of fiction, real novels in a higher poetic style. They were at first written in Prākrit, later in Sanskrit. One work of this kind was the Tara ngavatī of Pădalipta (Pālitta) Sūri, mentioned already in the Anuogadāra Sutta. This is lost, but a shorter version of it in Prākrit Gāthās under the title Tarangalolā is preserved in one Manuscript (which, however, as Prof. Jacobi tells me, is in a very bad state). Better known are the religious novels Samarāiccakahā of Haribhadra in Prākrit prose with Gāthās (ed. by H. Jacobi in Bibli. Ind.), the Bhavisattakahā of Dhaņa vāla (ed. by H. Jacobi, Munchen, 1918), a romantic epic in Apabhramśa, and the allegorical novel in mixed prose and verse Upamitibhavaprapañcākathā of Siddharşi (906