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230
JAINISM IN SOUTH INDIA
Chalukya rulers of Kalyāpa. It is dated the Chālukya Vikrama year 18, Srimukha, Phālguna su. 10, Monday. The date is regular and its English equivalent would be A. D. 1094, February 27, Monday. The object of the document is to record an endowment of land for the maintenance of a Jaina temple which was erected at Inguộige by the queen Jākaladēvi with the approval of the king. The gift was made over with due ceremony into the hands of the Jaina teacher Indrasēna Bhattāraka, who was to look after its management.
The genesis of the Jaina sanctuary and how it was founded, is interest. ing and the story is graphically narrated in the record. Jākaladevi, renowned for her beauty and attainments in fine arts, was the beloved queen of Vikramā. ditya VI. She was placed in charge of the administration of the village Ingunige and seems to have been conversant with the affairs of the state. An ardent follower of the Jaina faith, she persisted in her religious practices amidst unfavourable circumstances and even against positive disapproval of her husband. Vikramaditya VI tried his utmost to wean her way from her ways, but did not succeed. One day, a sculptor, having secured audience with the queen, was exhibiting an image of the god Mahu-Māņikya. At that moment, the king happened to come there. Moved by her unflinching devotion, he exhorted her to purchase the image from the artist and enshrine it in her estate village. Accordingly she erected a decent temple and installed the image therein.
This typical anecdote, simple as it is, bears profound significance. For it reveals, in conjunction with other similar instances, the psychological back. ground for the mighty faith of Jainism that wielded powerful influence over the rank and file of the people of Karnăţaka during this period. It need not be judged as something unnatural in respect of the king Vikramāditya, that, inspite of his sympathetic outlook towards other religious creeds in his kingdom, he was himself a staunch adherent of the Brahmanical religion and did not countenance his own beloved wife treading a different path. But all praise to Jākaladēvi who stood firm to her ideals of the spirit and asserted the right of following the faith of her choice according to her convictions.
Jākaladēvi, we are told, was the daughter of Tikka. No more details regarding her personal or family history are available from the record. Although this inscription is being edited here in full for the first time, it appears to have been copied through his Paņạitas by Sir Walter Elliot more than a century ago and included in his unpublished volumes of the Carnat Des Inscriptions. The late Sir John Fleet who had access to these volumes makes a passing
ference to Jākaladēvi among the queens of Vikramāditya VI, evidently on the testimony of this same epigraph'. He further remarks in the same context that she was the daughter of Tikka of the Kadamba stock'.
i Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. I, pt. II, p. 448.
