Pravachanasara

Author(s): A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 53

20
Pravacanasāra
[p. 21:] of eminence, to compose an eclectic work like Kural without making it purely a code of Jaina dogmas. The Jainas were gaining ground round about Mysore soon after the 3rd century B.C., when Bhadrabāhu migrated to the South; and within the next two centuries the Jaina faith must have been spreading southwards. If it was to be preached to masses, it must be put in palatable terms and that too in the vernacular of the masses. It has been a policy of Jaina teachers, wherever they go, to adopt the local language for preaching their dogmas. So they might have cultivated Tamil to spread and preach the fundamental Jaina doctrines in Dravidian countries. The Jaina authorship consistently explains the strong back-ground of Aryan thought and culture in Kural, because only a couple of centuries before the Jainas had come down freshly from Magadha and surrounding parts in Northern India. The Jaina teachers, the earlier generations of them being well acquainted with Magadhan polity and forms of Government, introduced in their works political notions and theories as current in Magadha, and that is the reason why we find so many points of affinity between Kautilya's Arthaśāstra and Kural. At the beginning of the Christian era the Jaina teachers appear to have been not very confident about their prospective success in the Tamil land, and they might have been afraid that their words might not be well received among the wise of the land; this appears to be the reason why Elācārya or (if he is identical with Kundakunda) Kundakundācārya might have presented Kural to the Madura Sangha through his disciple, Tiruvalluvar, who, from his name, appears to be the son of the soil in Tamil land. In the next two centuries the Jaina faith became gradually established, and the Jainas were the pioneers of the so-called Augustan age of Tamil literature, and by the close of the 5th century A. D., as Devasena tells us in his Darsanasāra (24 etc.) Drāvidasangha, perhaps a designation indicating some geographical limitation to the Mulasangha, was established in Madura by Vajranandi.
LATER LIMIT FOR THE DATE SUGGESTED FROM LITERARY AND EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCES.-Turning to the earliest Digambara commentators with a desire to see whether their works help us to settle the date of Kundakunda by quotations etc. from Kundakunda's works, we find that the earliest available commentaries, being incorporated in Dhavalā and Jayadhavală, do no give any help, because it is wellnigh impossible to distinguish the various strata with their respective authors. Pūjyapāda, so far known the earliest Digambara commentator on Tatt vārthasūtra, quotes, in his Sarvārthasiddhi (II, 10),1 five gāthās, which are found in the same order in Bārasa-Anuvěkkhā (Nos. 25-29) of Kundakunda, though he does not say from what source he is quoting. The context in which they are quoted, the serial order of quotation and the absence of these quotations in Rajavārtika of Akalanka2 etc. go to indicate the genuineness of these quotations in Sarvärthasiddhi.3 Bārasa-Anuvěkkhā [p.22:] has some gāthās common with the eighth chapter of Mülācāra, 4 but these gāthās do not figure therein; and I am not aware of these gāthās in any of the ear
1 Sarvärthasiddhi, pp. 90 etc. Ed. Kolhapur, Saka 1839. 2 Tattvärha-Räjavärtikam, Ed. Benares, 1915. 3 Sometimes the copyists, not minding the chronological consequences, incorporate, in
the course of copying, important quotations etc, from later commentaries in earlier ones. 4 Mülācāra, Ed. MDJG Vols. 19 and 23.