Jainism and Karnataka Culture

Author(s): S R Sharma
Publisher: Karnataka Historical Research Society Dharwar

Page 96

II. CONTRIBUTIONS : LITERATURE,
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
JAINA WRITERS OF KARNATAKA
In the preceaing section we have made occasional references to the patronage extended to Jaina writers by the rulers of various dynasties in Karnātaka, both Jaina and non-Jaina. For example, we have alluded to the patronage of Ravikirti by Cālukya Pulakesi II, of Jinasena and Guņabhadra under the Rāştrakūtas, as well as of Pampa, the author of Pampa Bhārata, under Arikesari, a Cālukya feudatory of the Rāştrakūtas. We have also spoken of a Jaina prince named Sālvamalla whom the inscription on the base of an image in the Madrās Museum describes as “a lover of Sāhitya or literature.” The literary excellence of many of the Jaina inscriptions of the South such as, for instance, the Kudlür Plates of Mārasimha Ganga, has also been incidently pointed out. Mr. R. Narasimhachār of Mysore has made a spelndid selection of some of these (both Jaina and non-Jaina ) in his Śāsana-Padya-Manjari or Poetical Extracts from Inscriptions in Kannada. The interest in Jaina literature evinced both by rulers as well as their ministers and generals is amply indicated by works such as the PraśnóttaraRatnamālikā by Amoghavarşa Rāşțrakūța, Nānārtha-Ratnamālā by Irugapa Dandanayaka of Vijayanagara, and the Caundaraya Purāņa by Cāundarāya, minister and general of Mārasimha and Rácamalla Ganga. In the present chapter we shall consider the subject more systematically and in greater detail wherever that is possible. For the sake of convenience the linguistic method of dividing the subject into Prākst and Sanskrit authors on the one hand, and vernacular writers on the other, is preferable to the merely chronological method without regard to the medium of expression. The latter would give us a truly historical