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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM instance to have confounded the Jainas with the Buddhists of Kopaņapura.
This supposition is strengthened when we note that in the seventh century A.D. Kopana was essentially a Jaina tirtha. Epigraphic evidence proves this. In the Halagēri stone inscription of the Western Cālukyan king Vijayāditya (A.D. 696-A.D. 733) mention is made of this great Jaina sanctuary.1
A rapid survey of the epigraphs and one or two notices in literature conclusively shows that Kopaņa remained a great tirtha for the Jainas from the seventh till the sixteenth century A.D. In the Ganjam plates issued by the Ganga king Mārasinga Ereyappa, and assigned by Rice to circa A.D. 800, we have one of the witnesses styled thus-Mādhava of Kuppal.? This may be taken to be the earliest variant of the name by which Kopana is known to-day-Kopbal. As Rice pointed out long ago, Kopaņa is mentioned by the Rāştrakūta monarch Nspatunga (A.D. 814A.D. 877) in his Kavirājamärga, as one of the four cities in which the pith of the Kannada language was spoken. In this connection it is interesting to observe that in one of the stone inscriptions discovered near the grave of Kādalaralinga in the Maunakõțe at Kopbal, in the characters of the same century (the ninth century A.D.), mention is made of the Rāştrakūta dynasty and of the monarch Nrpatunga. Another stone
1. We owe this to the labours of Mr. P. B. Desai, K. H. R., II, no. 1, p. 48.
2. E. C. IV Sr. 160, p. 143.
3. Ibid., I. Intr. p. 15; Kavirājamārga, Pithika, V, 37 Sce also Charlu, Kannada Ins., p. 2; E. I. XII. 148. The late Mr. Narasimhacarya disproved Fleet's contention that Kaviśvara, and not Nppatunga, was the author of Kavirājamārga. (I. A. XXIII 258). Read Kavicarite I, pp. 14, 17-20.
4. Desai, K. H. R., II, no. 2, p. 12.
