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JAINA CELEBRITIES IN THE VIJAYANAGARA EMPIRE 375 Vidyānanda defeated a European champion of Christianity. We are in the dark as to the identity of the learned European who was thus vanquished; but there can hardly be any doubt as to this success of the great Jaina priest in that city. It is remarkable that Vādi Vidyānanda should have mastered the tenets of Christianity, and met and defeated an expounder of that faith in a viceregal city of Vijayanagara. With him we come to the climax in the history of Jaina theology and oratory, precisely at the same time we reach the zenith in the annals of the Vijayanagara Empire.
But Jaina genius had already expressed itself in other branches of knowledge. To literature and medicine its contribution was truly profound. For well nigh two centuries the Jainas had been driven into the background by the Vira Saivas who had dominated Kannada literature. In spite of this the Jainas managed to come into light, and succeeded in adding quite a good deal to the wealth of the Kannada language.
One of the earliest names we meet with in the Vijayanagara age is that of Bahubali Pandita, the disciple of Nayakīrtideva. This guru, as we have already seen, has been referred to in a record found in the Meleyūr Pārsvanātha basadi, Chāmarājanagara, and assigned to A.D. 1380. We said that this inscription calls him an emperor of all learning, and one who was proficient not only in astrology but in two languages.1 We know that in Saka 1274 (A.D. 1352) he wrote the Dharmanāthapurāņa concerning the fifteenth Tīrthankara. He had the biruda of Ubhaya-bhāṣācakravarti,2 obviously because of his proficiency in Sanskrit and Kannada
1. E. C. IV. Ch. 157, op. cit. 2. Kavicarite, I. pp. 414-415 ; II. pp. 35-36.
