Jainism in India

Author(s): Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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JAINISM IN INDIA
there still exhibited Kumaraviharas, which however are much restored and contain no inscription. "In Cambay and Dhandhuka", Buhler stated "they believe they know at least the sites where Kumarapala's edifices once stood." Even in the absence of any surviving monument, the literary evidence cannot be brushed aside. For of the three authors quoted above Hemacandra was contemporary, and the other two, namely Prabhacandra and Merutunga might have indulged in certain exaggerations, when describing the number of temples built by Kumarapala, but we believe that both were fundamentally right in recording that the king had built a very large number of temples. These might have been small edifices, architecturally insignificant compared to the Abu temples of Vimala or Tejahpala. What Hemacandra and Kumarapala probably desired above all was not any ostentatious display of architectural skill but a means to propagate the faith, which is clearly emphasised in the Jalor inscription. Hence instead of concentrating their attention on a few grand temples, they probably built a large number of small temples or congregation halls all over the country, just as Hemacandra and Prabhacandra state.
After Kumarapala Jainism, ceased to receive any state patronage. But the great days of Jainism were not yet over. If Jainism had lost the patronage of the kings, the support that religion received from the merchant princes like Vastupala, Tejahpala, and Jagadu was compensation enough for that loss. In a sense the withdrawal of royal favour proved beneficial to the Jainas, for it brought the rivalry between them and the Brahmins from the political to the spiritual and intellectual plane, and here they were fully equipped to hold their own against the Brahmins. The great charitable works of relief undertaken by Jagadu during the famine which lasted for three years during the reign of Visaladeva, must have also contributed to increase the popularity of Jainism during this period.
Today the names of Vastupla and Tejahpala stand eminent amongst the lay members of the Jaina church by the monuments of faith they erected on the heights of Abu and Girnar, and by the large number of biographies of the two brothers written by their contemporaries, mostly pious Jaina monks, and their eulogy by the Brahmin sycophant Somesvara.
Again in the case of Vastupala and Tejahpala we find that the literature of the period credits them with having built a very large number of temples of which but only a few survive; the rest were probably broken by the Muslims. But we have epigraphic evidence which prove that