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Ārya Bhadrabāhu
M. A. Dhaky
Preliminary Considerations
From at least the post-Gupta period, the patriarch Arya Bhadrabāhu (c. B.C. 325-297) has been held in the highest esteem and unswerving reverence by the principal Jaina sects, the designation ‘Jaina' anciently was known as ‘Nirgrantha.' The notices on Bhadrabāhu largely hail from the literature of the two surviving major sects of the Nirgrantha-darśana, Svetāmbara and Digambara. Bhadrabāhu is reckoned and adored by both sects as the last caturdaśapūrvadhara' as well as the śruta-kevali2. And yet the glaring fact remains that he very largely has remained an illusive figure. The Jaina writers of our own times possess a strong, even an obsessive, bias for his supposedly inestimable greatness. As a result, they failed to see through the veil of illusion created by some stray but relatively late-some contradictory and confused-literary and inscriptional references to him and likewise could not escape the spell of ethos of the dazzling aura they themselves projected around him. Some of them explicitly believed (and still believe) in all that was attributed to him in the past as an invariate fact, a tangible and truthful reality. The high-pitched reverential attitude adopted for Bhadrabāhu has not only hindered an objective approach toward searching and reconstructing his realistic image, not even a sketchy history based on available evidentiary facts, but also, as its consequence, has disallowed taking dispassionate estimation of him and his supposed contributions. This happening, in essence and so far, has led to preclude examining the very basis on which the edifice of esteem for him was built. Likewise, excepting for one category of literature, the niryuktis, very little effort had been made in the past toward checking the veracity of the claim for what are looked upon as the works authored by him in the Northern Nirgrantha (Svetāmbara) tradition3.
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