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870
JAINISM IN SOUTH INDIA placed under the administration of two officers, one Bankeya and another Sankaraganda. This Bankeya may be identified with Bankeya II of the Mukula or Chellakõtana family. The epigraph is dated Saka 846, a mistake for 847, Pārthiva, corresponding to A. D. 925–26. Two inscriptions from Hāvanagi" speak of the authority of Sankaraganda over entire Banavāsi Nāļu. In these records he is styled Mahāsāmantādhipati, which title is absent in the earlier inscription from Lakshmipur. The epithets Jayadhira, Bhuvanai. karāma and Abhimānadhavala are applied to Sankaraganda in the two epigraphs from Hāvanagi, one of which mentions his epithet Rattara Mēru in addition. The Hāvanagi inscriptions belong to the reign of Rāshtrakūța Indra III, but mention no specific date.
The following facts emerge from the contents of the above epigraphs. The Lakshmipur record seems to indicate that Sankaraganda commenced his career as a subordinate officer of Indra III sometime prior to A. D. 925-26. He had to collaborate, to begin with, in the administration of the Banavāsi regio: with Bankeya, another subordinate officer of a respectable family of chiefs Within the next few years he was promoted to the full authority over the region and raised to the rank of Mahāsāmantādhipati. He continued in that office for a long time subsequently, about half a century, during the reigns of three successive Răshtrakūta rulers, viz., Indra III, Krisbņa III and Khottiga. As a high official of the state, he seems to have utilised his vast resources and influence for the promotion of the Jaina faith and earned las name among its great patrons. This is gathered from the following.
Happily Sankaragaņda is known from a literary source also. In his work Ajitatirthakarapurāņatilakam, the Kannada poet Ranna describes the great luminaries of his times, whose pious and philanthropic activities contributed to the shining glory of the Jaina faith. In this context he mentions the following names in succession and states that each one of the successors excelled his or her predecessor in religious fervour. They are Būtuga (II), Marula," Nolainbāntaka or Mārasimha, Chāvuņdarāya, Sankaraganda and Attimabbe. Ranna wrote his Purāņa in A. D. 993 when he was aged over forty years. So it is just likely that the poet knew Sankaraganda in his young age as his senior contemporary, though the latter does not seem to have lived by the time of the above date. We are hence justified in assuming that Sankaraganda of the epigraphs and his namesake of the Parāņa were contem
1 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXII, pp. 224-25. 2 An. Rep. on Indian Epigraphy, 1949-50, Appendix B, Nos. 86 and 90. These insorip
tions were copied by me in course of the epigraphical survey of the Hängal taluk. 3 Aśvāsa XIT, verse 9. 4 This name has been wrongly read as Mama!a in the published text of the work.
