________________
Arya Bhadrabahu
to belong to earlier times88. After these two relatively early Prabhācandrasone figuring in the 600 A.D. inscription, the other appearing in the two literary allusions, one being post-Gupta (early Calukya) and the other pre-medieval (early Raṣṭraküța)-several other Prabhācandras successively came in different ganas and gacchas till the late medieval times as inferred from the Digambara inscriptional and literary/ hagiological and allied notices. This early 'Prabhācandra' of Śravanbelgola, then, generates an enigma which will need future efforts and concrete, indeed more definitive, evidence to resolve it. One thing is certain. He cannot be connected either with Bhadrabahu or with Candragupta.
Within 50 years of this earliest inscription on Candragiri mentioning Prabhäcandra, scores of other inscriptions are encountered from whose report it is clear that the pontiffs and mendicants, monks and nuns, vied with one another ritually to give up their life on this sanctified Hill. Could the legend of the first Prabhācandra-a figure unknown in the annals-passing away here have inspired this phenomenal (and from the standpoint of Jainism a sacred and elevating) activity of self-mortification on this Hill? Arguably not. A more powerful stimulus was needed for this development. Plausibly, between c. A.D. 550-650, a new and a parallel legend was being worked out, at some Jaina centre in Karnataka, of Śrutakevali Bhadrabahu and his supposed disciple, the Maurya emperor Candragupta, laying down their life by the sacred rite ofsallekhana on this Hill. Some anecdotes or bits of partially valid historical facts must have existed for the formulation of such a legend.
127
The beginning of a part of this belief, somewhat vaguely though, may be sensed in a statement occurring in the Tiloyapaṇṇattī (Trilokaprajñpti, c. A.D. 550 with sizeable later additions) that, among the crowned kings, Candragupta was the last to be initiated to the Order89: There is, though, no clarification in this notice whether the 'Maurya' Candragupta is implied and who his preceptor was. It is only the epigraphical records, in date posterior to the Tiloyapanṇatī, to be noticed now, which implicitly or explicitly connect the two.
The most crucial on this issue is the Śravanabelogol inscription 17-18 (32) in Kannada, dateable to c. mid seventh century. It states: "When the Faith that had much prospered in the time of the pair of the chief among the sages Bhadrabahu and Candragupta-who shed lustre on it, later grew dimmed, (then) the coral-lipped Säntisena, the chief among the ascetics,
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
