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JAINISM AND KARNĀTAKA CULTURE
therefore, he must have flourished about 678 A.D.41 Mr. Hirālāl assigns him to about 500 A. D.42 Consequently it is impossible for us to arrive at any definite conclusion as to the exact date of this great teacher.
The facts relating to Akalanka are not less obscure than those we have attempted to notice above. Yet, that these writers were historic persons who exerised tremendous influence in their own days is equally certain. Tradition makes Akalanka a son of Subhatunga, King of Mānyakheța, who is identified with Kệşņa I, Rāştrakūța, who reigned during the latter half of the eighth century A. D. He is supposed to have forsaken his father's kingdom for the sake of adopting an ascetic's life. And Peterson observes, that such action is characteristic of the times when "Kings were the nursing fathers and queens the nursing mothers of the religion he embraced.” 43 Akalanka is said to have challenged the Buddhists at the court of King Hastimalla (Himaśítala ?) of Kānci, saying that the defeated party should be ground in oil-mills. The Buddhists were driven into Ceylon owing to the victory of the Jaina teacher through the intervention of the goddess Kuşmāndini.14 But this may be only understood as a legendary description of Akalanka's victorious logic which made his name proverbial as a "Bhațțākalanka in logic,” applied to later writers.45 His most famous work is the Tatvārtha-vārtika-vyākhyālankāra which again is a commentary on Umāsvati's Tatvārtka-sūtra. He also wrote the Astašati on which Astasahasri or the Book of Eight Thousand verses by Vidyānanda is a commentary. Akalanka is classed among the Nayyāyikas or great logicians, 46 Rice has observed that according to Wilson, Akalanka was from Śravaņa Beļgoļa, but that a
Bhandārkar, Early History of the Dekkan, p. 59 43 Hiralal, op. cit., p. xx. 43 Peterson, op. cit. IV, p. 79; cf. Nāthuram Premi, Vidvadratnamila I,
pp. 23-4.
Cf. Ep. Car. II Introd., p. 81; Hirālāl, op. cit., pp. xxvi-viij. 45 Of. Ibid., SB 69 & 254. 46 Hirālāl, op. cit., pp. xx, xxvi f; l'eterson, op. cit., p. 79.
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