________________ Preface Sometime later, a monk happened to visit the merchant's house. The merchant offered him food with great veneration. The cowherd boy gifted 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 sont 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 Sri Kundakunda. The mention of his name in the samavasarana of Lord Simandharasvami in Purva-Videhal as the wisest of mortals, the visit of two carana saints to have it verified, Sri Kundakunda's indifference to them on account of his deep meditation, their return in disgust, the misunderstanding cleared and reconciliation between the carana saints and Sri Kundakunda, and the latter's visit to the samavasarana of Lord Simandharasvami in PurvaVideha with the two carana saints. The merit of sastradana made him a great leader of thought and organizer of institutions. He secured the throne of Acarya and spent his life in usefulness and glory. [adapted from A. Chakravarti Nayanar (2009), "Acarya Kundakunda's Pancastikayasara", Third Edition, p. xix-xx.] Acarya Kundakunda's time A.N. Upadhye (1935), in his exhaustive and scholarly Introduction to 'Pracvacanasara'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 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 Sita and Sitoda. In five Meru of Videha there are twenty regions; if one Tirthankara is present in each region, there would be a minimum of 20 Tirtharkara in five Videha-regions. Lord Simandharasvami is the Tirthankara present in the Purva-Videha region of Jambudvipa. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . XIII
