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FOREWORD
Within four years of his edition of the Manoramakaha (L.D. Series, No. 93), Pandit Rupendrakumar Pagaria has brought out another weighty Prakrit work of Vardhamana-sūri. The Jugai-jinimda-cariya(i.e. Yugādi-jinendra-carita) (JC), having the extent measured as 11000 verse units and written in 1160 V.S. (i.e. 1104 A.D.), is the legendary biography(carita) of Rsabha, the first Jain Tırtbarkara. It belongs to a period when such religious narratives ( dharma-katha ) came to be accorded an elaborate Kavya treatment, and consequently, say from the tenth century onwards, we have a crop of that type of works, which use disparate styles, themes, and linguistic and literary mediums, all at the same time. One and the same work would have the traditional parrative frequently interspersed with illustrative tales and anecdotes (didactic or popular) using sporadically a highly orgate style to alternate with a simple, realistic, conversational style, and using verse as well as prose, whose Prakrit would be liberally sprinkled with Apabhramsa and sauced with Subhāşitas (original or citations) in three languages. Accordingly, over and above its worth due to its sacred theme, as also due to inculcating principles of Jainism and enjoining the Jain way of life, JC has several other interesting features, about which the following few comments seek to draw the readers' attention.
of its fortyfive secondary stories and apecdotes, we may note a few. Besides making use of some frequently occurring Jain narratives, Vardhamana-sari has derived a few illustrative tales from the general store-house of Indian stories. The following five stories belong to the Pancatantra tradition, Tayateya-kumāra (p. 19 ff.), illustrating the merits of practising austerities(ta pas), is an adaptation of the Weaver As Vişnu (=Purņabhadra's Pancakhyana I 8; also in the Western Indian Recension), with Śiva substituted for Visnu. Incidentally in one of the episodes of that story, we also have a motif that characterizes the type The Magic Bird-Heart (viz. the hero favoured with two boons: daily getting five hundred gold pieces and eventually wioning a kingship). It also uses the motif of outwitting a rougish prostitute.
The anecdote of The Physician's Sons(p. 18) is an adaptation of the Four Learned Fools (Pañcākhyāna, V 3).
In the illustration of the Man With A Pot of Barley-meal (pp. 98-99), we have a version of The Castles In The Air (Pancakhyāna V 7, also in some other Pancatantra versions).
In the fable of The Hunter, The Snake, The Elephant and The Fox (pp. 37-38), we have an elaborated version of the Greedy Fox (=Pañcikh yāna, 11, 4; also in other Pancatantra versions).
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