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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM Queen śāntaladevi's work to promote the cause of the Jina dharma was lasting. She was the cause of the elevation of the four samayas (or creeds), and she delighted in gifts of food, shelter, medicine, and learning, and in the narration of stories relating to Jainism. It was she who had the image of Sānti Jinendra at Sravana Belgoļa made in A.D. 1123. In the same year she caused to be erected the Savatigandhavāraṇa basadi in the same holy place; and with the permission of king Vişnuvardhana, granted the village of Mottēnavile (situation specified) to her guru for the worship of the god and food for ascetics in the same basadi. To this gift was added in the same year specified lands below the Gangasamudra.? To the same basadi she (called in this record Cantaladevi) gave the village of Kāva. nahaļļi (location specified), along with her younger brother Dudda Mahādeva, in order to meet the expenses of the god in the Vīra Kongāļva Jinālaya (the situation of which is indistinct in the record).2 All this work earned for her deserved praise. She was the "crest jewel of perfect faith,” and "a rampart to the Jina faith."3
True to the instruction of the Jina dharma, she died by the orthodox manner of sallekhana in A. D. 1131 at the holy place of Sivaganga (thirty miles to the north-west of Bangalore). The inscription dated in that year continues to narrate that on her death, her parents too died. Of the death of her mother, we have some details. “The queen has attained to the state of the gods; I cannot remain (behind)”, thus saying her mother Mācikabbe, coming to
1. E. C. II, 131, 132, pp. 60, 75. 2. M. A. R. for 1927, p. 104.
3. E. C. II, pp. 60, 75. Read also M. A. R. for 1917, p. 10, for the work she did in Säntigrāma, according to tradition.
