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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM was composed in A.D. 993 under the patronage of Cāmundı Rāya.1
We may note by the way that Cāmunda Rāya's younger sister Pullavva died by the orthodox Jaina rite in the Cancranātha basadi at Vijayamangalam, Coimbatore district. A nisidhi (called here nisidikā) was set up to commemorate the event.2
Great as the material contribution for the cause of Jina dharma by Cāmunda Rāya certainly was, greater was the name which he left behind for posterity to follow. We shall revert to this point later on when we shall see how a samas line of kings took upon themselves a noble task which Cāmunda Rāya had first shown to the country.
Continuing the history of Jainism we find that there were other Jaina military leaders who were also to a large extent instrumental in the progress of Jainism in Karnāțaka. Gene. ral Sāntinātha was one of them. He was the minister-gereral to Rāyadanda-Gopāla Lakşma, the right hand man of the Western Cālukya monarch Someśvara II, and was himeelf a great poet. In a record dated A.D. 1068 we have many interesting details concerning General Sāntinātha. He was “the chief treasury officer of Banavasenād, and the bearer of the burden of its affairs, and the promoter of that kingdom." Dançanātha Sāntinātha is called in this record “a royal swan to the lotus the supreme Jina creed." The reason why he was so styled is given in the next sentence which reads thus“Many impurities having corrupted the nectar of the Jina
1. Kavicarite, I, pp. 62-63. M.A.R. for 1923, p. 16. On other Cāmunda Rāyas in Karnātaka history, read M. A. R. for 1931, p. 200.
2.597 of 1905; Rangacharya, Top. List., I, p. 545.