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JAINA EPIGRAPHS: PART I
209
and officials of the state vindicated their religious fervour by erecting temples in this holy place. vi) Ascetics from different parts of the country came to this place with a view to end their lives by the religious rite of sanyasana. The earliest renowned instance available on the point is perhaps that of the monk Kumarasēna who approached this place from Mulgund for the purpose.' vii) It was a popular centre of pilgrimage, attracting people from far and near places.
One deplorable fact, however, that weighs heavily on our judgment while holding our balance between Kopbal and Sravana Belgola, merits particular notice. This is the ruin and destruction that has befallen the Jaina antiquities of Kopbal as contrasted with those of Sravana Belgola, which have never been subjected to the fatal hand of the vandal, at any rate, to the extent of the former. But even in the present disrupted state of its relics, the large number of epigraphs constituting either the memorials of those zealous aspirants who courted death on its hills under the vow of sallekhana or the autographs of pilgrims visiting the place; the figures of Tirthakaras and the representations of the Nishidhi scene carved out on the rocks of hills; pillars, coping stones, door-jambs, fragmentary sculptures and pedestals of images, which were originally associated as their integral parts with several temples and shrines, discovered here and there and extensively built into the modern houses and structures-all these speak eloquently for the eminence of the place as a Jaina holy centre, while adding their own weight of local evidence to the testimony of external sources. Inscriptions hailing from the Mysore State speak of the unusually large number of Jaina temples, which was a characteristic feature of this holy place. Reminiscence of this past phenomenon is still preserved in a local saying which avers that the town contained 772 Jaina temples and was regarded by the Jaina community as sacred as the Kasi Kshetra or Banaras, the famous holy place of the Hindus. This numerical figure, even though it looks rather conventional and may not be literally true, unmistakably denotes the proverbially large number of its temples. From among these shrines, a temple dedicated to Chandranatha or Chandraprabha Tirthakara must have stood prominent and been widely known among the followers of the faith. This fact is disclosed by the imprecatory passage in a copper plate charter of Keladi Sadasiva Nayaka, which places this deity on par with Gummaṭanatha of Śravana Belgola and the Nemisvara of Ujjantagiri.*
1 Chamuṇḍaraya's Adipurāṇa, verse 15.
2 In the Sōmanathacharitre of Raghavanka, a Kannada poet of the beginning of the 13th century, there is an allusion to the Maladhari Śramanas from Kopana; Harischandrakavya (Mysore University publication, 1933), Introduction, p. xix.
3 Ep. Carn., Vol. II, No. 127; Vol. VII, Sk. No. 317, etc. 4 Ep. Ind., Vol. XX, p. 94.
