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MEDIEVAL JAINISM
contemporaries.1
There are two more details concerning Bahubali which may be noted. He relates that Lalitakirti, while expounding the Jina purana in the court of king Bhairavendra looked at him as if to enquire whether Bahubali could not put into verse the Sripañcami story. It was this which made Bahubali write the story of Nagakumāra.2 The Jaina guru spoken of here is to be identified with his namesake who has already figured as the vicarakarta of the public charities at Hiriangaḍi in A.D. 1579 in the previous pages.
Another detail corroborates the statement we have made regarding Sringeri being a Jaina centre. At the end of his work Bahubali prays that the god Brahma on the Brahmā pillar in front of the Parsvanatha basadi situated on the southern bank of the lake which lay near the hill Kundadri in Karnataka, may protect it. We know from the opening lines of his work that Sringeri itself was situated to the south of the hill Kundadri. This statement referring to the Pārsvanatha basadi only confirms the epigraphic evidence we have cited above in regard to the Jaina influence at Sringeri in the sixteenth century. A.D.
Quite a number of Jaina literary men are met with in the last quarter of the sixteenth century A.D. Some are insignificant like Śrutakirti, the author of Vijayakumārīyacarite, and the disciple of Akalanka guru of Kanakagiri.5 But others were well known like Doddaṇānka. This writer was the son of Beṭṭada Gummi Setți of Nittūru. He wrote
1. M. A. R. for 1932, pp. 203-205.
2. Kavicarite, II, p. 288.
3. Ibid, II, p. 290.
4. Ibid, II, p. 287. 5. Ibid, II, p. 299.
