Life and Stories of Jaina Savior Parcvanatha

Author(s): Maurice Bloomfield
Publisher: Maurice Bloomfield

Page 15

INTRODUCTION
This essay is based upon Çrī Bhāvadevasūri's Pārçvanātha Caritra, edited by Shravak Pandit Hargovinddas and Shravak Pandit Bechardas (frāvakapaņdita-haragovindadāsa-becaradāsābhyām saņçodhitam). Benares, Vīrasamyat, 2048 (A. D. 1912). Professor Leumann, in his List of Digambara Manuscripts in Strassburg, WZKM. xi, p. 306, mentions an Oxford Ms. of a Pārçvanātha Caritra by Sakalakirti. A manuscript of the same work by the same author is also catalogued by R. G. Bhandarkar, in his Report on the search for Sanskrit manuscripts in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1887), in the list of Digambara mss. (pp. 91-126, nr. 12). A third Pārçvanātha Caritra, by Udayavīragani, is cataloged by Rājendralālamitra, in his Catalog of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the library of the Mahārāja of Bikāner (Calcutta 1880), nr. 1502; and a fourth, by Māņikyacandra, on pp. 157-164 of Peterson's Third Report on search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Bombay Circle (Bombay 1887). J. Burgess, Indian Antiquary, ii. 139, note, has the following statement: “ It (namely, the Pārçvanātha Caritra) was written by Briddha Tapa Gacha 'in Samvat 1654, and occasionally calls this Jaina by the name of Jagannātha.—Delamaire, Asiat. Trans. vol. i, pp. 428436.” As the Asiatic Transactions are not accessible, I
* According to C. M. Duff, The Chronology of India, p. 260, one Sakalakirti probably composed in 1464 the Tattvārthasiradipaka; cf. Leumann's List, p. 302. Sakalakirti is also author of one of several Çāntinátha Caritras; see Guerinot, Essei de Bibliographie Jaina, p. 90, and cf. pp. 75, 84, 390. See also Weber, Berlin Handschriftenverzeichnisse, vol. ii, pp. 903, 1091-2.