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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
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NOTES
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
301
ascetics, coming from a hundred directions (sakata-samana-suvihitanam ca sata-disānam yatīnam tāpasa-isinam lenam karayati). In the fourteenth year's record (I. 15), the cave-dwelling on the Kumari hill are collectively designated as Arahato nisidiya, "the Arhata (Jain) seats."
Mr. Jayaswal seeks to maintain on the strength of some later and mediæval Jain authorities that the term nisidiya, as employed in the HathiGumpha inscription, should be interpreted as signifying a "tomb." Accepting his interpretation of the term, we have to understand that King Kharavela and his compatriots excavated the 117 caves on the hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri to provide the resident Jain saints and recluses with suitable places for entombing or burying their bodies.
We know perfectly well that his explanation of nisidiya, considered as another form of nişaddhi, nisidi, nisadyā, nisadyakā, nisidhiyā, nisidhikā. nisidhyalaya or nisidhigeha, may be justified by the use of the term in several mediæval inscriptions, mostly found in South India, the references whereto have been collected by Dr. P. K. Acharya in his Dictionary of Hindu Architecture. But the question is whether this later medieval meaning can be read into nisidiya of the Hathi-Gumpha inscription or not, whether, if at all, the idea of a tomb can be associated with lena in its generic or in its specific sense.
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In the first two Barabar Hill cave inscriptions, King Asoka has not stated the purpose of the caves labelled by them and dedicated to the Ajivikas. But in the third inscription, if Dr. Hultzsch's reading of it be correct, the stated purpose of the cave was to provide its inmates with a retreat during heavy showers of rain (jalaghosagamathati). Anyhow, we have the Nagarjuni Hill cave inscriptions of King Dasaratha to clearly state the purpose of the dedicated caves to be to provide their Ajivika-dwellers with resting places during the rainy season (vaanisidhiya). As regards the thirteenth year's record in the Hathi-Gumpha text (I. 14), the stated purpose of the caves may be taken to be, first, to provide the Jain saints and recluses with permanent residences as may be inferred from the expression Arahato parinivasato, and, secondly to provide them with solitary retreats for rest, bodily as well as mental (kāya-nisidiyāya, here kaya denoting both rūpa-kaya and nāma-kāya as the Buddhists would explain it). We have, moreover, seen that the Pali commentator Buddhaghosa has explained lena as a synonym of sendsana, a term standing for all kinds of retreats of the ascetics and recluses affording an opportunity for lying and sitting. It may also be noticed that the various purposes of the five kinds of hermitages or
