Mahavira and his Teaching

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

Page 346

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVAN MAHĀVĪRA'S CULT 339
but it had to be shifted to the present locality during the iconoclastic epoch of Islamic rule. Our learned friend, Dr. K. K. Pillai, tells us that, when he visited the spot recently for area studies, he was surprised to see some of the local Jaina laymen smearing themselves with Saivite holy ashes (vibhūti). At Jina-Kāñci itself, the great Jaina temples and their employees alone survive to serve the Jaina pilgrims who visit the place. There are a few more smaller shrines too elsewhere which keep the flame of Jainism alive. 103. Sankara, the Keralite,---perhaps a junior contemporary of the famous Ilarko-Adika!, did his best to absorb Jainistic 'ways of life', but not its philosophy, into his six-footed 'şanmatha'. He did not and could not destroy its basic spirit. He was often dubbed by his superficial critics as a 'pracchanna-Bauddha'. It would have been nearer the truth, if he had been called 'pracchanna-faina'. 104. Time, that indefatigable tarnisher of memories, has converted the Jaina goddesses, Kaņņakī and Padmāvatí Deví, into Sāktā deities, and Parávanātha into an Ananta-Krsna. Is it inconcievable if the self-same time could also revive older memories due to a concatenation of other circumstances? We have inserted the word 'eclipse' in the title of this paper, suggestive of the transitoriness of the phenomenon of disappearance of the Bhagavān's cult from the Tamil Land. Who can assert that it was its last phase ?
APPENDICES
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Two of the 75 recently-deciphered Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions confirm the historicity of the Pāņdya king, Neduñcheliyan. Nos. 1 and 2 of the Mānkuļam epigraphs have been read and translated as follows by its decipherer, Sri I. Mahadevan, I.A.S., in his 'Corpus of the Tamil Brāhms Inscriptions' appearing in the "Report of a “Seminar on Inscriptions", Madras, (1966)— 'Mankulam 1-"Kani-y nanta asiriy-ik-uvan kē dhammam
Itta-a netun jaliyan pana-an katalan Valuti-y koțțūpitta-a pali-iy."