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Jainism in Early Medieval tíarnataka
guarantced by the donors under moral threals. The alicnation of the donated land is held as heinous crimc for thc Jainas in the imprccalory vcrses of the records. Thc person who confiscates the grant through grecd or impicty is declared to be guilty of the five great sins. The property of the gods is called dreadful poison, for it is considered capable of destroying not only the seizer but also his sons and grandsons.? Moreover, the monks themselves took the task of defending the monasteries and their huge wealth from the aggressors. A record of the 10th century tells us about Moni-bhatára, a disciple of Gunacandra-bhatāra, who protected the Jaina *monastery of Kellangere at the cost of his life,» when Ballapa tried to capture it in the reign of the Ganga king Būtuga,
The Jaina monks enjoyed not only fiscal but also administrative rights over the lands assigned to the monastcrics. An cpigraph of the 10th century speaks of the administration of the village Pasundi or modern Asundi in the Gadag taluq of the Dharwar district by the preceptor, Candraprabha-bhatāra, the high priest of Dhora. Jinālaya at Bankapur. The village evidently came as an endowment to the Jaina temple. Another record of the same century refers to Srivara-Matisāgara-Pandita as the ruler of Sravana-Beļgoļa, which was the chief centre of the Jaina monastic organisations. Though the early records are silent about the grant of the administrative rights, it was difficult to cnforce fiscal rights without some measure of administrative authority. It seems that the monasteries were equally frce from royal interference in matters of administration at least from the 10th century. For the maintenance of law and order in the area assigned to thein, they may have depended upon the kings.
Inscriptions show that the monks, who were the custodians of the Jaina monasteries, wielded considerable control
1. IA, vii, nos. 35-fi. 2. EC, i, Cg 1, p. 51. 3. lhid, v, BL 123, p. 80. 4. BKI, i, pt. i, no. 34, p. 20, cited in P.B. Desai, op. cit., p. 139. 5. EC, iii, Sr. 148, p. 34.
