Jainism in South India and Some Jaina Epigraphs

Author(s): P B Desai
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

Page 273

247
JAINA EPIGRAPHS: PART II
inscription on stone set up in the Ramalinga temple at Hodal in the Gulbarga District. The epigraph is dated in A. D. 1180 and narrates the genealogical account of a family of chiefs who claimed their descent in the lineage of Nabhirāja. The record further points out that they were lords of the excellent town of Kopana (modern Kopbal, Hyderabad State ). Their hereditary fief comprised a unit of Sixty Villages in the region of One Hundred and Twenty Villages of Gonka. This account is substantiated by another unpublished inscription from Harasur in my private collection. It is dated in A. D. 1172 and contains a reference to the authority of two members of this family over the tract.
The name Gonka appears among the ancestors of this family in the Hodal inscription. After him a chief named Bibba is mentioned. He is followed by two more generations. The title Alandeveḍanga (ornament of Alande) is met with in the prasasti of these chiefs in the same epigraph. These details supported by the contemporaneity of the two namesakes go to prove that Bibbarasa of the present epigraph is identical with Bibba of the Hodal record. The epithet 'Padmavatidēvilabdhavaraprasada', applied to Bibbarasa in our record, indicates that he was a follower of the Jaina faith. Chaudhare Rakkasayya appears to have been a subordinate and petty officer under Bibbarasa as the context shows. It is not possible to determine the powers and functions attached to his office as Chaudhare. Being a staunch adherent of the Jaina faith he zealously practised its teachings. He was a lay disciple of the great teacher Balachandra Siddhäntadeva. This teacher was a constituent of the Mula Samgha, Desiga gaņa, Pustaka gachchha and Piriya samudaya (senior section).
The pedigree of the teachers to which Balachandra belonged is set forth at some length in the inscription. It commences with Koṇḍakundacharya, the pioneer of Jaina church in South India, and gives the following. names in succession in the line of his spiritual disciples: 1 Konḍakunda, 2 Gridhrapiñchhacharya, 3 Balākapiñchhacharya, 4 Gupanandi, 5 Devendra, 6 Vasunandi, 7 Ravichandra, 8 Pürnachandra, 9 Damanandi, 10 Śrīdharadeva, 11 Maladhari, 12 Chandrakirti, 13 Nayanandi, 14 Vardhamana, 15 Divākaranandi-Traividya, the senior, 16 Jinachandra-Mahamantravadi (note the epithet), 17 Sarvanandi, 18 Balachandra, 19 Maladhari, 20 Kalyanakīrti, 21 Arhanandi-alias Beṭṭada Deva, 22 Balachandra Siddhantadēva.3
1 He was also known as Umasvati according to other sources. Inscriptions from Sravana Belgola and later Jaina writers from the 14th century onwards, speak of Gridhrapiñchhacharya as another name of Kopdakunda. But our record clearly states that the former was the successor of the latter. See Pravachanasara, Introduction, pp. 4-5.
2 The relationship between this teacher and his predecessor in the above list is not quite explicit. About fifty years later there flourished a teacher named Arhanandi Beṭṭadadeva, of the same monastic affiliation, in the Bijapur region. Vide above pp. 189-90.