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This occurred in the year 139 after Mahavira's nirvana. He studied all the twelve canonic Aniga treatises with his guru Yasobhadra, and lived to be the last of the fruta-kevalins. In the year 148 after Mahavira's nirvana, he was accorded the status of an ācārya along with Arya Sambhūtavijaya. When Sambhūta vijaya died, in the year 148 after Mahavira's nirvana, Bhadrabābu became the head of Mahavira's order of monks. A great famine occurred at this time and lasted for full twelve years. Bhadrabāhu spent this period in Nepal, where he practised yoga and the meditation known as mahaprānāyama. While Bhadrābahu was still in Nepal, a council of monks met to collect and record the canon. Arya Sthūlabhadra was sent to Bhadrabāhu in order to study the canonic works with him, for Bhadrabāhu was the only living person who knew the canon in its entirety. Bhadrabahu taught Sthūlabhadra the fourteen Parva-treatises, ten of them with exegetic explanations and the other four in just their original forms. He also wrote four works which are placed in the Cheda class of the Jain canonic Sätras. These are : Daśāśrutaskandha, Brhatkalpasatra, Vyavaharashtra and Nišithasitra. He died in the year 170 after Mahāvira's nirvana.'
Tradition also ascribes to him the authorship of Niryuktis on the following ten canonic works : Acīrānga, Sátrakyt, Avašyaka, Dašavaikälika, Uttaradhyayana, Daśāśrutaskandha, Byharkalpa, Vyavahāra, Suryaprajnapti and Rşibhāşita. He is also said to have composed the celebrated hymn called the Upasargaharastotra. There are legends that speak of him as a brother of Värāhamihira, the famous astronomer. Other legends relate the story of how he had divined the sixteen dreams of Chandragupta Maurya. There is large body of such legendary material, whose worth as history is dubious. There have been many Bhadrabāhus among Jain monks, and as it often happens, stories current about later Bhadrabāhus have come to associated with the most ancient and the most celebrated of them all, namely the author of the Kalpasatra.
( xxvi)
1. Acarya Hastimalla, Jain Dharma ka Maulik Itihasa, Part II.
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