Medieval Jainism

Author(s): Bhasker Anand Saletore
Publisher: Karnataka Publishing House

Page 50

ROYAL BENEVOLENCE
35
the Rāṣṭrakūta monarch Dantidurga Khaḍgāvaloka, Vairamegha, honoured one of the greatest figures in all Jaina history-Akalankadeva. A later stone inscription dated A.D. 1129 referred to elsewhere in this treatise, contains some interesting details in regard to king Dantidurga and Akalankadeva. While describing the greatness of the latter, the record says "The following is represented to be his own description of the greatness of his extraordinary faultless learning: O king Sahasatunga, there are many kings with white parasols; but kings who are victorious in war and distinguished by liberality, like you, are hard to find. Just so, there are many scholars in the Kali age; but no poets, pre-eminent disputants, orators, and experts in researches in various sciences, like me. As you, O king, are well known in putting down the arrogance of all enemies, so am I famed on this earth as the destroyer of all the pride of scholars. If not, here I am, and here in your court good and great men are always present. Let him who has ability to speak, if versed in all sciences, dispute (with me). It was not with a mind influenced with self-conceit or filled with hatred, but through mere compassion for those people who, having embraced atheism, were perishing that, in the court of the shrewd king Himaśītala, I overcame all the crowds of Bauddhas and broke Sugata with my foot.'" Since Akalankadeva is said in a small Sanskrit work called Akalankadevacarita to have defeated the Buddhists in Vikrama year 700, the identification of Sahasatunga with Dantidurga may be accepted as valid.2
1. E. C. II, 67, p. 27.
2. Ibid, Intr. pp. 48, 84. See also Altekar, Rāştrakutas, p. 409. Dantidurga bore the biruda Sahasatunga obviously because of his great victories. Read Fleet, Dyn. Kan. Dts., pp. 32-33 (1st ed.)