Nayakumarchariu

Author(s): Pushpadant, Hiralal Jain
Publisher: Balatkaragana Jain Publication Society

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THE POET AND HIS PATRON
the fruit of observing the fast of Sri-pañcami. He was also requested to the same effect by Nanna the minister of Vallabharāya, and Näilla and Silaiya urged him to associate the work with the name of Nanna. The poet acceded to their request and began the story.
Four, out of the five MSS. used, give at the end what is called the author's Prasasti. Besides the usual information about his parentage, the author here records something that has not been told anywhere else. He tells us that his parents were at first devotees of Siva but “they had their ears filled by the ambrosia of the teacher's words and so they died by the Jaina form of renunciation." We have here, no doubt, the mention of the conversion of Pu padanta's parents from Saivism to Jainism.
Puspadanta has, in all his works, profusely eulogised his patrons. In the Mahāpurāna he tells us that when he reached Mānyakheta, he was received with great honour by Bharata, the king's minister who kept him in his own house and induced him to write poetry. The Mahapuräna is dedicated to him ( MahābhavvaBharaha-anumannia' approved by the noble Bharata). Bharata was a Brahmin of Kaundinya gotra. His father's name was Aiyana or Annaiya, mother's Sridevi and wife's Kundabbā or Kanakadevi. He had seven sons, Devalla, Bhogalla, Nanna, Sohana, Gunavarma, Dangaiya and Santaiya. Of these Nanna seems to have succeeded his father, either because his elder brothers died premature or because of his surperior talents. Two works Jasaharacariu and Ņāyakumāracariu are dedicated to him, the former being called Nanna-kannāharana, an ornament to the ears of Nanna, and the latter 'Nanna-ņāmankia' stamped with the name of Nanna. He has been highly eulogised in Kadavaka 3 and 4 of Chap. I of the present work. One of his adjectives, Vicchiņna-Sarāsai-Bandhava, seems to me to suggest that Nanna took particular interest in the revival of Prakrta poetry which was going out of use as we know that almost all of the Jaina authors who lived immediately before Puspadanta, for example, Jinasena, Gunabhadra, Somadeva, Akalamka and others, wrote in Sanskrta. Of the other brothers of Nanna, Sohana and Gunavarma or Gunadharma, while yet young, had a hand in inducing the poet to compose the Nayakumiracariu and Dangaiya is mentioned in the ending eulogy. The office of ministership was hereditary in the family but there seems to have been an interruption just before Bharata who is said to have restored the family to the position which it had lost. In the verse prefixed to the second chapter of Jasaharacariu, mention is made of Nanna's sons. Thus, in Puspadanta's works we find mention of the four generations of this illustrious family, associated with the ruling dynasty of Mānyakheta during the tenth century.
We are not sure that we have discovered all the works of Puspadanta. Hemacandra, in the commentary to his Desinäma-mālā mentions Abhimana-cinha five times (1,144, VI, 93; VII, 1 ; VIII, 12, 17.,) and quotes from his Sūtra-pātha and Vitti which appear to be some lexicographic works of Desi words like the works of Dhanapāla and Hemacandra. Abhimāna-cinha does not seem to be a proper name but a title like the Abhimāna-meru of our poet. It is not unlikely
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