________________
JAINA MEN OF ACTION
105 time. This ruler's son Ereyappa had married the Rāştrakūta king Amoghavarşa III's daughter Rēvakka and secured important principalities as his dowry.3 On the death of king Amoghavarşa III, the same Ganga king Bhūtuga assisted king Krşņa III, the son of king Amoghavarşa, to secure the Rāştrakūta throne against an usurper named Lalliya. And king Bhūtuga himself was assisted by king Krşņa III to win his throne against his rival Ganga Permmāļi.4 This dynastic alliance, therefore, had proved to be of mutual advantage.
On king Bhūtuga's death, he was succeeded by king Mārasimha who, in order to continue the policy of helping the Rāştrakūtas adopted by his father, assisted king Kannara (Krşņa) III in the latter's sweeping conquests of the Tamil country. And when that Rāştrakūta monarch died, and confusion cropped up in the Rāştrakūta Empire, king Mārsimha promoted the coronation ceremony of the last prominent Rāştrakūta king Indra IV, the son of king Krşņa III, and thereby struggled against odds to give a longer lease of life to the Rāştrakūta power. But this was an insurmountable task, since the powerful enemies of the Rāştrakūtas and the Gangas,—the Western Cālukyas,shattered the hopes of the two in A.D. 973 ; and king Indra IV, as elsewhere related in this treatise, died in A.D. 982 by the Jaina rite of sallekhanā at Śravana Belgoļa.
1. See Rice, My. & Coorg., p. 44. seq., for earlier examples of the same.
2. Rice calls him the II, of that name on p. 45, ibid., but corrects his error on p. 67.
3. Epigraphia Indica, IV, p. 350.
4. Ibid., p. 249; V, p. 188. See also E. C., III. Md. 41 ; XI. Intr. p. 9.
5. E. I. IV, p. 280. 6. Rice, My. & Coorg., pp. 45-46.
