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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM again. Then Samantabhadra went to Kañci where lived king Śivakoti, whose devotion consisted, among other things, of daily distributing twelve khandugas of rice in the temple of Bhimalinga. Samantabhadra assured the king that he would make the god accept the food ; and one day while alone in the temple, ate up all the twelve khandugas of rice. On opening the temple doors the astonishing king found that all the food was gone! The next day Samantabhadra left a quarter, and on the following day half of the food, explaining that the god had granted it for prasāda. But the suspicions of the king being arcused, he had the temple surrounded with his troops with orders to burst open the door. At this Samantabhadra was so frightened that he prayed to the Tirthankaras, whereupon Candraprabha appeared in his full glory in the place of Bhimalinga. Samantabhadra at once threw open the doors, and the bewildered king fell at his feet begging for instruction in the Jina faith. Making over his kingdom to his son, the king took dikşā and became known as Sivakoți Ācārya.1
From the above it is clear that śivakoti was king of Kañci and not of Benares, as is narrated by Prabhācandra. But it must be confessed that the age and identity of this king, as well as that of the king of Karahātaka, mentioned in one of the records cited above, will remain unsettled for want of sufficient data. All the same it may be suggested that it was in the second century A.D. that the tenets of the anekāntamata were spread to the great city of Kañci ; and
1. Devacandra cited by Narasimhacarya, Kavicarite, I. pp.24; E. C. II. Intr. p. 83, n(4).
2. Probably the north Indian tradition associated Sivakoti with Benares. Hiralal refers to Brahma Nemidatta who is said to have noticed it. Cat. of MSS. p. xix.
