________________
JAINA MEN OF ACTION
127 When he brought the whole of Gangavādi under the supremacy of his royal master, “the grateful king Vişnu, being pleased, said-'I am pleased ; ask for a boon.' Thereupon, though he knew that the king would give (anything that was asked), he did not ask like ordinary people for any other thing, but intent on the worship of Jina, asked for Govindavādi (i.e., Gangavādi) amidst the plaudits of the earth. The nobleminded (Ganga) granted it with joy for the worship of Gommaţadeva, so that the assembly of sages, expressing approbation again and again, exclaimed, “This is excellent !"" It was after receiving Gangavāļi as a gift that Ganga Rāja showed what a devout Jaina, who had done his duty to the State, could do for his religion. For, as all records of his own period inform us, Ganga Rāja after securing this unparalleled gift from king Vişnuvardhana, renovated all the basadis in Gangavāļi and restored them to their former condition. He had the enclosure made around Gommaţadeva at Śravaņa Belgoļa. This work alone earned for him the following praise from the engraver Vardhamānācāri A.D. 1118-- “Was not Ganga Rāja a hundred-fold more fortunate than that former Rāya (i.€., Cāmunda Rāya) of the Gangas?” The next statement in thc same epigraph explains it thus-- "Wherever he marched, wherever he was encamped, wherever his eyes rested, wherever his mind was attached, there he had rich Jina temples made, and thus the country was everywhere brought through Ganga Rāja to the condition in which it had been in days of yore.” Indeed, the engraver, who we may well assume perhaps only voiced the popular sentiment, attributes extraordinary powers to the great Jaina general thus
-The reason why the world extols the distinguished Jaina devotee Attimabbarasi is because the Godavari stopped flow
1.
E. C. II, 73, p. 40.
