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JAINA IPGRAPHS: PART 1
early stage with the one given in the Sravana Belgoļa epigraphs, Nos. 66 and 117. After Dövēndra our record mentions Vasunandi and Ravichandra who are not found in the records from Śravaņa Belgola. The teachers who follow next in our epigraph are Pūrņachandra, Dāmanandi, Sridharadēva, Maladbāri and Chandrakirti. It is interesting to note that these names figure in the same suocessive order in an inscription from the Yedatore taluk (No. 24; Ep. Carn. Vol. IV), that gives an account of the teachers of the Hanasoge line which was an important section of the Dēsiya gaņa. But these teachers of identical names in the two lists could not be identical on account of their chrono.
ich is realised from the calculation of generations. The names of teachers who succeeded Chandrakīrti in our record, are not known previously.
iii) A detailed succession of teachers of the Krāņür gana is furnished in No. 6. A comparison of this list with similar lists of teachers of the same gana, found in the inscriptions of the Shimoga taluk ( Nos. 4, 57 and 64; EpCarn., Vol. VII), shows that the account of our epigraph materially differs from similar accounts in the records from the Mysore area. The three teachers who succeeded Rāvanandi in our epigraph are Padmanandi, Munichandra and Kulabhū. shaņa. It is interesting to note that these three names figure in the same consecutive order in the inscriptions from the Sorab taluk (Nos. 140, 233; Ep. Carn., Vol. VIII) and elsewhere, which are of a later period. The teachers who succeeded Kulabhūshaņa of our epigraph bear no reseunblance with the other lines of teachers of this gaņa.
Post-MORTEM MEMORIALS I have alluded elsewhere to a peculiar mode of setting up the Nishidbis or post-mortem memorials, which has remained unnoticed hitherto. This was the practice of dedicating a part or the whole of a holy structure, to wit, a pillar or a maņdapa of a temple, in memory of the deceased person, as in the case of the Nishidhi of Vidyānanda Svāmi in the Nõminātha Jinālaya at Maļkhôd (No. 14). In some cases the Nishidhi memorial was confined to the depiction of the event itself, or to the epitaph only, recording the death of the person as in the case of a few inscriptions from Kopbal (Nos. 19, 20 & 27). If we examine the epigraphs from Sravana Belgola we find that this practice was fairly common in those days. A good many inscriptions from Sravaņa Belgola engraved on the pillars of the maņdapas or halls of a holy structure speak of the death of particular individuals and the setting up of the Nishidbi memorials in their name. From an examination of these structures one would realise the fact that since it was not possible to conceive in all these instances that the structures concerned were built on the physical remnants of the deceased persons or materially connected with them in any other way, they were associated with them merely in name and memory only and were assumed to represent their Nisbidhis.
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