Life of Hemchandracharya

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

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LIFE OF HEMACANDRA revenues which he received from charcoal-burning, from the forest, from the tax on bullockcarts kept for hire etc., and he ordered to destroy the register about these things. The contents of the twelfth vow made him remit taxes to the annount of 12 lacs which the "faithful” (s'rāddhas) paid. For the same reason, he granted money to needy Jainas and had houses (sattrāgāras) built where food was distributed to beggars. As regards his title of honour, Hemacandra called him Saranāgatatrāta, "Protector of the supplicants for help", for his fulfilment of the first vow, Yudhisthira for the fulblment of the second, and Brahmarsi for that of the fourth.107
Moreover, we find in all the Prabandhas the statement that Kumārapäla undertook one or several pilgrimages to the Jaina shrines of Gujarat in company with Hemacandra. According to the Prabhāvakacaritra, only one took place quite at the end of his reign. On this one pilgrimage he visited Satruñjaya and Girnar. He did not, however, mount the latter hill himself, but worshipped Neminātha at the foot of it. He commissioned his minister Vāgbhata to construct a better road up the rock. Merutunga's Tirthayātrāprabandha gives a very similar account. It connects with it, however, the anecdote of the planned attack by the king Dāhala, and makes Kumārapāla, as the leader of the Jæina congregation (Sarghādhipati), enter Satruñjaya via Dhandhuka. In the first-named city, so it is said, the "Cradle-vihāra' (p. 46 ) was built on this occasion. Merutunga also appears to place the pilgrimage at the end of Kumārapāla's reign. Rājasekhara, on the other hand, speaks of two pilgrimages: one to Kāțhiāvād and the other to Stambhapura or Cambay, which latter city the king is said to have presented to Jina Pārsvanātha. Finally, Jinamaņdana agrees with Merutunga, but declares in his general survey of Kumārapāla's work that the king consecrated himself by seven pilgrimages, and that on the occasion of the first one, he worshipped the Jina with nine jewels which were worth nine lacs.108 Now, even if there be no confirmation of these statements in documents of Kumārapāla's time, one may nevertheless believe the Prabandhas when they say that the king actually visited Satruñjaya and Girnar towards the end of his reign. The silence of the Dvyās’rayakāvya and of the Mahäviracarita on this point has no great significance, for both these works were composed, as shown above, soine time before the end of Kumārapāla's reign. On the other hand, the rare, complete agreement of both the oldest Prabandhas is a weighty argument in favour of the general correctness of their statement, and a still more weighty one for the internal probability of the same. It is precisely in their last years that the Indian princes make pilgrimages their habit and it is easy to understand that Kumārapāla, who had himself built shrines in various localities of the peninsula of Kāthiāvād, felt it incumbent on himn to pay a visit to them. On the contrary, it is extremely questionable whether the details of this pilgrimage are correctly described. For, one can hardly believe that if Kumārapāla visited Girnar, he should have left unvisited Deva pattana which is not very far from Girnar and where his temples of Pārsvanātha and Somanātha stood. The statements about his visit to Cambay and about the seven pilgrimages can have, of course, little claim to be credible as they are to be found only in later works.
As to Hemacandra's end, the Prabhāvakacaritra gives no details. It only says that he died in Vikrama-Samyat 1229. Merutunga gives some more details.