Political History of Northern India

Author(s): Gulabchandra Chaudhary
Publisher: Sohanlal Jain Dharm Pracharak Samiti Amrutsar

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POLITICAL HISTORY OF N. INDIA FROM JAIN SOURCES
basis of their works by the authors of the Rāsamālā and the Bombay Gazetteer, Volume I.
The Prabandha-kośa contains the life stories of 24 persons, namely, 10 Jain teachers (including Hemacandra), 4 poets, 7 kings and 3 other personages.
The Purātana-prabandha-sangraha is a collection of various small and big Prabandhas. It has certain peculiar and important prabandhas like Bhojagängeya-Prabandha, Dhārādhvansa-Prabandha, Pịthvīrāja-Prabandha and Nādūla-Lakhan-Prabandha.
This much can be said on the importance of the Prabandhas that no history of mediæval India can be considered complete without utilising the material available in them.
Certain Jain works written in the style of dramatic plays may also be regarded as the chronicles of our period. They are the Moharājaparājaya of Yaśahpāla, the Hammira-mada-mardana of Jayasimha and the Rambhämanjarī of Nayacandra. The first mentioned work depicts the social, religious and political life of Gujarata. The second one throws light on the mutual relationships of the kings and the kingdoms that existed at the time of Viradhavala (Vaghela). And the third constitutes an important source of the history of Gähadavālas.
(2) Narrative Literature: "Jain literature, both canonical and still more non-canonical, is the very store house of popular stories, fairy tales and all kinds of narrative poetry."1 The Jain monks and authors have always been more fond of telling tales than historians. They have produced a vast literature of this type in prose and verse, in Sanskrt, Prākṣt and Apabhransa. From this branch of literature we may obtain a better knowledge of the real life of common people than from other branches of literature. This category includes many kathās, ākhyānas and caritas. The works written on them mostly deal with the lives of individual religious heroes such as Jivandhara, Yasodhara, Karakandu, Nägakumära and Sripāla; then there are edifying tales of pious house-holders and ladies who devoted themselves to the observance of certain vows and religious practices; there are short biographies of ascetic heroes well known in early literature and lastly, there are tales of retribution, illustrating the rewards and punishments of good and bad deeds here and hereafter. The matter in all these stories consists in the motives and the doctrinal preachings. Some heroes are drawn
1 Winternitz: The Jains in the History of Indian Literature, Ahmedabad, 1946, p. 9.