Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 316

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVAN MAHĀVĪRA’S CULT 309
revealed to us through any other source. In the historical geneologies of the ancient Cheras, occuring elsewhere, we find no trace of the existence of such a hermit-prince, even though we find a 'sel-keļu-kuttuvan', answering partially to the descriptions of the character ‘senkuttuvan' of the poem. But our bias in favour of his Jaina persuasion has been based on the interpretation of the term 'Kunavā yir-kottam; as tirukkuņavāyil, or kuņavāy, or kuņakkaņvāy, as a Jaina monastery, by Adiyārku-nallar, the erudite 12th century-commentator of the epic. 30. In the major epilogue (katturar) at the end of the poem, as well as in the three canto-epilogues, the epic is declared to have been deliberately composed to exemplify the various literary forms, styles and devices of poetics and folk art and there is not even a hint anywhere in the body of the poem or in the katturais' that it was chronicling a true story or history. It is the Buddhist author of the prologue who declares that he too had witnessed the 'Divine Vision of the patron-deity of Madhurai talking to, and appeasing the anger of, the heroine, Kaņnaki, and advising her to take a 14-day trip to the hills of Keraļa to rejoin her husband's divine spirit! 31. As there are a number of passages, in the extant version of 'Silappadhikāram', which are absent in some manuscripts of it, there is justification enough to conclude that more than one hand had touched up its arche-typal text. Nevertheless, as a Ceylonese prince Gajabāhu, is also mentioned in the last chapter as having attended the consecration ceremony of the heroine's image at Vañchī, it is surmised that the author must have flourished about the end of the 2nd century after Christ, which was the date of the Ceylonese king. 32. The three cantos of the epic depict, almost photographically, the cultural mileus of the three ancient kingdoms of the Chola, the Pāņdya and the Chera of a particular epoch of history besides making the rulers themselves important characters thereof. The author, Iļanko-Aạika! himself, reveals in one context that he had been entrusted with the composition of the poem because of his