Mahavira and his Teaching

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

Page 328

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVĀN MAHĀVĪRA'S CULT 321
challenge of his co-poets that a celebate hermit could not handle successfully the erotic sentiment in a kavya. He won the bet.
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58. This episode naturally suggests that the extant version of the 'Silappadhikāram', which contains many erotic chapters in its first two cantos, and yet composed by a Jaina monk, Iļankoaḍikal, did not exist at the time of Tiru-t-takka Tévar. An alternative conclusion is also plausible,-viz., that the first cantos of Silappadhikaram' were not the handi work of Ilankoaḍikal, but has been tacked on to the third canto, 'Vanchi-kandam', composed by him. This 'Vanchi-kāṇḍam', by itself, possesses all the requisites of an independent poem. This redactor must be posterior to Tiruttakka-dévar in date. It is also very likely that the author of the first two cantos, (barring a few obvious interpolations) has composed them as an independent 'Tonmar' type of poem and names it 'Silppadhikāram', long anterior to Ilanko aḍikal. Iļanko aḍikal's main objective is also quite patent from the contents of the 'Vanchi-Kandam',-viz. to glorify his national as well as family deity, the famous 'Kodungallur Bhagavati and to make her a common deity acceptable to not only the Cheras, the Pandyas and the Chļas, but also to the Hindus, the Jainas and the Buddhists. The later redactor seems to have combined the two independent poems into one, with appropriate pantheistic touches here and there in both.1
59. Irrespective of the correctness or otherwise of our conjctural solution to the problem of the authorship of this epic, the epigraphical data cited above confirm our general conclusion that
It was the late Professor P. T. Srinivasa Iyenger, who first mooted the idea of multiple authorship to the extant text of ‘śılappadhikāram’-The ancient Tamil Grammar, 'Tolakāppryam', defines 'Tonmar' as a type of archaic narrative poem, dealing with dharma, artha, kāma and mokṣa. Naccinarkiniyar, the great commentator of that grammar cites 'Silappadhikaram, as one of the examples of a 'Tonmar' poem, but does not mention the name of its author. Presumably it was the archetype version of the epic. M.M.-41
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