________________
Niyamasāra
नियमसार
those texts to the great monk. For their acts of piety, the master and the boy received blessings from the monk. The master couple had no children. It so happened that the faithful boy died after some time. Due to his act of giving the gift of sacred texts to the monk, the boy was born as a son to the merchant. As time passed, this intelligent son became a great philosopher and religious teacher, Kundakunda by name. The story further turns to the religious pursuits of Śrī Kundakunda. The mention of his name in the samavasaraņa of Lord Sīmandharasvāmi in Pūrva-Videhal as the wisest of mortals, the visit of two cāraṇa saints to have it verified, Śrī Kundakunda's indifference to them on account of his deep meditation, their return in disgust, the misunderstanding cleared and reconciliation between the cāraṇa saints and Sri Kundakunda, and the latter's visit to the samavasaraṇa of Lord Sīmandharasvāmi in PūrvaVideha with the two cāraṇa saints. The merit of śāstradāna made him a great leader of thought and organizer of institutions. He secured the throne of Ācārya and spent his life in usefulness and glory. [adapted from A. Chakravarti Nayanar (2009), “Ācārya Kundakunda's Pancāstikāyasāra”, Third Edition, p. xix-xx.]
Ācārya Kundakunda's time
A.N. Upadhye (1935), in his exhaustive and scholarly Introduction to ‘Pracvacanasāra’has summarized as under:
"In the light of this long discussion on the age of Kundakunda wherein we have merely tried to weigh the probabilities after approaching the problem from various angles and by thoroughly thrashing the available traditions, we find that the tradition puts his age in the second half of the first century B.C. and the first half
of the first century A.D. ..." He concludes:
"I am inclined to believe, after this long survey of the available
1 As per the Jaina cosmology, there are five Meru and five Videha in the human
region. Each Videha is divided into four regions formed due to division by rivers Sītā and Sītodā. In five Meru of Videha there are twenty regions; if one Tīrthankara is present in each region, there would be a minimum of 20 Tirthankara in five Videha-regions. Lord Sīmandharasvāmi is the Tirthańkara present in the Pūrva-Videha region of Jambūdvīpa.
(xx)
