Medieval Jainism

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

Page 58

ROYAL BENEVOLENCE
43 Isiva Beçenga, who ruled from A. D. 997 till A. D. 1009.1 As will be shown in a later context, he constructed a monument (nisidhi) in honour of a Jaina guru who had died in the birth-place of the founders of a great line of kings who succeeded the Western Cālukyas in Karnāțaka. Iriva Bedenga's guru was Vimalacandra Pandita Deva, the disciple (?) of Traikalamuni Bhattāraka of the Drāviļa sangha and the Pustaka gaccha. This guru seems to have died in about A.D. 990 when śāntiyabbe, a lay disciple of that teacher, set up a nisidhi in his memory.
Direct proof of the patronage extended to the Jaina teachers by the later Western Cālukya rulers is afforded in the epigraphs of the time of king Jayasiṁha III, who reigned from A. D. 1018 till A. D. 1042. There is every reason to believe that that ruler himself caused to be constructed a basadi at Balipura. This is inferred from a stone inscription in the Kattale basti at śravana Belgoļa dated A. D. 1100, in which the Jaina sage Maladhāri Gunacandra is said to have been the worshipper at the feet of the god Mallikāmoda śāntīša in Balipura. Since the title of Mallikāmoda was a distinctive biruda of king Jayasimha II1,4 we are to suppose that the basadi of Mallikāmoda Säntisa was built by king Jayasiṁha himself or by some one in his name.
The age in which king Jayasimha ruled produced a galaxy of great men both Jaina and Hindu. The most famous Jaina name is that of Vădirāja.s At the outset it may be
1. Rice, My. & Coorg, p. 73. 2. E. C. VI. Mg. 11, p. 60. 3. Ibid, II., 69, p. 35.
4. Ibid., VII, Sk. 20(a), 125, 126, 153, text pp. 135, 234, 235, 260 ; II. p. 48, and ibid, n(2).
5. Another Vādirāja, chief disciple of Sripālayôgindra, belonged to the village of Salya. He is mentioned in about A.D. 1200. E. C. V, Cn. 15, p. 193.