________________
Árya Bhadrabāhu
141
Bhadrabāhu was still alive and then was in Nepāla 110. It is difficult to reconcile the two totally differing and absolutely conflicting notices, their content standing poles apart. If these two represent not only very different traditions but also may refer to two separate Bhadrabāhu-s, which, somewhat remotely, may be a plausibility, then the first Bhadrabahu belonged to the Mauryan period and the second was of a later date who may have migrated to Sravanabelgola. However, the concerned biographical anecdotes of the two Bhadrabāhu-s (if the second really existed) were confounded in the past and the today's messy confusion arises therefrom"11. It generates a formidable conundrum which, in the present state of evidence cannot be resolved.
10) The complete absence in north India of inscriptions mentioning the ganas and the sākhās that had originated from Bhadrabāhu's lineage is a pointer to the fact that Bhadrabāhu's disciples and hagiological descendents were not in north India (Bengal and perhaps Orissa to be precise) and, by implication/deduction, had migrated to the Southern territories and settled there. Some, plausibly during the years of the draught, had gone as far as Simhala-dvīpa, while several apparently had settled in the Pāndyan country in lowermost Tamilnadu where the earliest grotto inscriptions (c. B.C. 2nd1st cent A.D.) indicating the passing away, apparently of the Nirgrantha recluses—assumably by the rite of sallekhana-have been inferred"12.
11) Bhadrabāhu of the Mauryan period, even if he really may have gone to Sravanabelgola, he may have done so a few years subsequent to the Pātaliputra Synod and after Sthūlabhadra's learning the Pūrva texts from him. There is no reason to brush aside the Northern sources on the point of Bhadrabāhu-Sthūlabhadra association. That particular tradition is, as recorded in the Northern literarily notices, positively anterior by about three centuries to the mid-seventh century Southern epigraphical reference that at best is suggestive only obliquely of the Bhadrabāhu-Candragupta connection with Śravanabelagola, while another epigraphical source at the same site, which is half a century anterior to the former, explicitly refers to Prabhācandra and his (unnamed) disciple and not at all to Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta : but the earliest literary source, the commentary of Bhrājisnu (c. 9th-10th cent.) talks about Bhadrabāhu and SampratiCandragupta (the ruler of Ujjayanī) visiting Sravanabelagola and not the Maurya emperor Candragupta (who ruled from Pātaliputra), who was
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