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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM in an inscription of A.D. 1432 we have the fact of Samanta. bhadra's being mentioned immediately after Balākapiñccha.!
Although the above records unmistakably point out to the proximity in time of Samantabhadra to Balākapiñccha, who was the disciple of Konakunda, yet they do not assert that Samantabhadra was the immediate disciple of Balākapiñccha. This is not surprising when we know that Balākapiñccha had a famous disciple called Gunanandi, as is proved by epigraphs dated A.D. 1115 and A.D. 1176.2 Nevertheless it may not be too much to assume that Samantabhadra was near enough in time to that Jaina teacher. This explains why he is placed immediately after Baläkapiñccha in the records cited above.
But the difficulty concerning Sainantabhadra's date is not thereby solved. For the date of neither Kondakunda nor Balãkapiñccha is known. Professor Upadhye after a caresul discussion of all available evidence places Kondakunda at the beginning of the Christian era... On the basis of this
1. E. C. II. 258, p. 117. But in this inscription Umāsvāli. muni is said to be born in the line of Kondakunda, which, as pointed out by Narasimhacarya, is not borne out by other records. Ibid, p. 117, n(1).
2. E. C. II. 66, 127, pp. 51-52.
3. The same conclusion was arrived at by Ramaswami. Studies, p. 43. Professor Upadhye relates that a Jaina Kannada magazine called Vivekābhūdaya, I. pp. 3-4, has discovered the village where Kondakunda lived. It is identified with Kondakund about four or five miles from the Guntakal railway station. Pravacanasāra, p. xxiii, n(2). But this discovery is not new. It was made long ago in the Epigraphical Report of the Southern Circle for 1916, p. 134, where it was said that Kondakunda's village was called Konakonala, Konakunțla, or Konkakunda. This suggests that we have to look for the domicile of the great Jaina teacher in an essentially Karnātaka locality, and not in
