Life of Hemchandracharya

Author(s): Manilal Patel
Publisher: Singhi Jain Shastra Shiksha Pith Mumbai

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OHAPTER III.-HEMACANDRA AND JAYASINHA-SIDDHARĀJA regarded them, as is also suggested by their not being mentioned in the Alankāracadāmani (see Note 38), as supplements to the Grammar, and on this account he might have considered any mention of his patron as superfluous. According to a short note which Merutunga gives at the end of the story of the Grammar, the Dvyās'rayamahākāvya also belongs to this period. It is said to have been written immediately after the Grammar, in order to celebrate Siddharāja's conquest of the world. This cannot, however, be absolutely correct. For, the last five cantos of the poem, Sargas XVI-XX, describe a great part of the career of the king Kumārapāla who was Jayasimha's successor. The end indicates that Kumärapäla was still living and stood at the zenith of his power. In its form, as extant, it cannot have been completed before V. S. 1220. Now because Hemacandra had also undertaken to revise one other work towards the end of his life, as will be later on shown, it is quite possible that the Duyās'rayakävya was undertaken at the wish of Jayasimha and perhaps was finished upto the narration of the decds of the king, that is, upto the fourteenth Sarga. In support of this, one can also add that the author of the Ratnamālā says,40 Jayasimha had the annals of his dynasty prepared under his order,' and that nothing is known about any other comprehensive chronicle of the Caulukyas excepting Hemacandra's work. While there is still some probability of the two koşas and the Kūvya having been written wholly or partly during the period of Jayasimha's reign, the same is not the case about the Alamkāracūdāmani and the Chandonus'āsana. These were probably written in the beginning of the rule of Kumārapāla. The reasons for this hypothesis are given below.
Many more anecdotes are described in the Prabandhas about Jayasimha's intercourse with Hemacandra after the compilation of the Grammar. The greater number of them deserves no serious attention because of their very character and those few which, at first, appear as if they were historical, prove to be, on closer scrutiny, of doubtful worth. The first story which the Prabhāvakacaritra describes, tells us that Rāmacandra, a prominent pupil of Hemacandra's, lost his right eye, because Jayasimha-to whom he had been introduced by his teacher-exhorted him to have only one eye on the Jaina doctrine (ekadraţir bhava). Merutunga, on the other hand, has another explanation for the probably historical fact that Ramacandra was a one-eyed man. According to his statement, this defect was the result of an ill-considered stricture which Rāmacandra, despite the warning of his teacher, passed on Śripāla's praise-poem on the Sahasralinga lake. The second story of the Prabhāvakacaritra describes how cleverly Hemacandra contrived to help himself out of adverse situations, and to silence the envious Brahmins. Once, so runs the story, a Brahmin who had listened to the exposition of Nemicarita in the Caturmukha temple of the Jainas, complained to Jayasimha that the heretics themselves did not even respect the venerable traditions of the Mahabhārata, and that they asserted the conversion of the Pāņdavas to Jainism. He added the request thereto that the king might check such a travesty of truth. However, before pronouncing any opinion on the matter, Jayasimha wanted to hear what the other party had to say and sent for Hemacandra as he was, in Jayasimha's opinion, the most learned and truth-loving Jaina. On being questioned whether the complaints of the Brahmin had in them any truth or not, Hemacandra admitted that the sacred scriptures of the Jainas did contain