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12
Pravacanasāra
tary and Jayasena in his Sk. commentary on Pancāstikāya say that Kundakunda composed that work to enlighten Sivakumāra Mahārāja who appears to be the same as Sivamsgesavarman of the Kadamba dynasty. Thus the date of Kundakunda, because of his having been a contemporary of Sivamrgesavarman, comes to Saka 450 i.e.528 A.D.
DATE PROPOSED BY PROF. CHAKRAVARTI.---The third opinion is that of Professor Chakravarti.1 He starts with 8 B.C. as the date of his accession to pontificate as worked out by Hoernle from Pattāvalis, and places the birth of Kundakunda in about 52 B.C. Further, in opposition to the date proposed by Pal he tries to find support for this date from the circumstantial evidences. Deduoliom the traditional stories that Kundakunda belonged to Dakşina-desa memphasis upon the fact that Kundakunda belonged to Drāvida-sangh
r ublished MS. of Mantra-laksana he draws the information that in the
P laya, in Hemagrāma, there was a great and wise monk Elācārya by name Drāvila-gaņādhisa.2 Prof. Chakravarti finds that all these references be traced in Drāvida country to which therefore, Kundakunda must have belonged, Elācārya being another well-known name of Kundakunda. Elācārya according to the Jaina tradition, is the author of the famous Tamil classic Thirukkural; he composed [p. 13:] it and gave to his disciple Tiruvalluvar who introduced it to Madura Sangha. Elālasingha, who is considered to be the literary patron of Tiruvalluvar, might be another name of Elācārya. The authorship of Kural by Jaina Elācārya fits in well with other facts such as the moral tone of Kural, the praise of agriculture as the noblest occupation practised by Valluvas, the landed aristocracy of the South, who formed the earliest adherents of the Jaina faith in Drāvida country. This identification of Elācārya or Kundakunda with the author of Kural (which is earlier than silappadigāram and Maņimēkhalai), which is not at all inconsistent with the possible age of Kural, would lend greater probability to the traditional date of Pattāvalis that Kundakunda lived at the beginning of the first century A.D. Being a leader of the Drāvida-sangha, Kundakunda might have composed works in Tamil for the benefit of the Vellalas of the ancient Tamil literature who were the strict followers of Ahimsa-dharma. In the light of the above discussion Prof. Chakravarti wants to settle the identification of Sivakumāra Mahārāja, the royal disciple of Kundakunda, for whom as all (?) the commentators of Prābhịta-traya say, Kundakunda wrote his works. Prof. Chakravarti accepts Pathak's position that the church was divided into Svetāmbaras and Digambaras, and perhaps the ordinary masses followed the Vedāntic form of Vişnu-cult; but he opposes the identification of Sivakumāra Mahārāja with Sri Vijaya Siva Mțgeša Mahārāja of the Kadamba dynasty of about the 5th century A.D. on the grounds that Kadamba dynasty was too late in time to be present at the time of Kundakunda, and that there is no evidence to the effect that Kadambas were acquainted with Prakrit language in which Kundakunda wrote his works. Further he proposes that Sivakumāra Mahārāja might be the same as king Sivaskandha,
1 See his Introduction to the Ed. of Pañcāstikāya, Vol. III, SBJ, Arrah, 1929. 2 I have every reason to think that this Elācārya, referred to in Mantralak şaủa appears to
be the same as Helācārya, previously referred to, on whose work the Jvālinimuta of Indranandi was based; see p. iv. ante.
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