Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 114

Christopher Chapple, “Religious Dissonance and Reconciliation”
Rajasthan.He eventually became a Jaina monk of the Vidyādhara Gaccha headed by Jinabhata, and wandered throughout Western India as a member of the Śvetāmbara order. Several traditional authors recorded legendary tales about the life, adventures, misadventures, and work of this prodigious scholar. Phyllis Granoff has summarized many such primary stories about Haribhadra." In these stories, two primary themes remain constant: his conversion to Jainism and his conflict with the Buddhists.
The first set of stories reveal a man possessed of both brilliance and arrogance. In his early years, Haribhadra, a member of the Brahmin caste, achieved a great degree of learning. He became quite boastful about his academic accomplishments and tied a golden plate around his belly to prevent it from bursting from the weight of all his knowledge. In another version, he also carries a "twig from the jambu tree to show to all that there was no one his equal in all of Jambudvīpa, that is in all the civilized world. He also carried a spade, a net and a ladder in his desire to seek out creatures living in the earth, in water and in the ether in order to defeat them with his great learning."
Thinking he had learned all that could be known, he proclaimed that if anyone could tell him something new, he would devote his life in its pursuit. It so happened that he
10 R. S. Shukla, India as Known to Haribhadra Suri (Meerut: Kusumanjali Prakashan, 1989), p. 1.
"She draws from a variety of works that begin to appear in the twelfth century, including Bhadreśvara's Kahávali; Sarvarājamuni's commentary on Jinadatta's Ganadharārdhaþataka, Prabhācandra's Kathākośa (1077C.E.),a collection of stories known as the Purătanaprabandhasamgraha, the Prabhāvakacarita, also attributed to a scholar named Prabhācandra, but at a later date (1277 C.E.), and Rājaśekarasūri's Prabandhakośa (1349 C.E.). See Phyllis Granoff, “Jain Lives of Haribhadra: An Inquiry into the Sources and Logic of the Legends,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1989, pp. 111-112.
12 Ibid., p. 113.
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