________________
PRAVACANASĀRA.
samvat; he concluded that Kundakunda, therefore, must have flourished after that, i. e. in the last quarter of the 3rd century of V. samvat, which would be in agreement with the conclusion arrived at from the evidence of S'rutāvatāra. At any rate, according to his view, Kundakunda cannot be earlier than 683 after Vīra, _. e., 156 A. D.
DATE PROPOSED BY DR. PATHAK.The next opinion is that of Pathak. He relies on two copper-plate inscriptions, one of S'aka 719 (ia 797 A. D.) and the other of Saka 724 (i. e. 802 A. D.), belonging to the reign of Govindarāja III of the Rāstrakūta dynasty. The inscriptions have a reference to a contemporary teacher Prabhācandra, the pupil of Puspanandi, who was in turn the pupil of one Toranācārya of Kundakundānyaya (KundaIcundānvayodbhavaḥ). K. B. Pathak argued that if Prabhācandra lived about S'aka 719, his grand-teacher, Toraṇācārya, might have flourished about Saka 600; and because Toraṇācārya is placed about S'aka 600, Kundakunda, to whose anvaya or lineage Toraņācārya belonged, might be placed about 150 years earlier, i. c. about S'aka 450 (i. e. 528 A. D.). He supports this argument by another. The Cālukya king Kārtivarman Mahārāja, who was on the throne in S'aka 500, subjugated Bādāmi and reduced the Kadamba dynasty; and thus, therefore, it is settled that S'ivamrges'avarman of the Kadamba dynasty was ruling some 50 years before, i. e., about S'aka 450. Bālacandra in his Kanarese commentary and Jayasena in his Sk. commentary on Pañcāstilāya say that Kundakunda composed that work to enlighten Sivakumāra Mahārāja who appears to be the same as S'ivamrges'avarman of the Kadamba dynasty. Thus the date of Kundakunda, because of his having been a contemporary of S'ivamrges'avarman, comes to Saka 450, i. e. 528 A. D.
DATE PROPOSED BY PROF. CHAKRAVARTI.—The third opinion is that of Professor Chakravarti.? He starts with 8 B. C. as the date of his accession
to the pontificate as worked out by Hoernle from Patļāvalīs, and places the V birth of Kundakunda in about 52 B. C. Further, in opposition to the date
proposed by Pathak, he tries to find support for this date from the circumstantial evidences. Deducing from the traditional stories that Kundakunda belonged to Dakşiụa-des'a, he lays emphasis upon the fact that Kundakunda belonged to Drāvida-sangha. From an unpublished MS. of Mantra-lalışana he draws the information that in the South, in Malaya, in Hemagrāma, there was a great and wise monk Elācārya by name who was Drāvila-gaya Prof. Chakravarti finds that all these references can be traced in country to which, therefore, Kundakunda must have belonged, I another well-known name of Kundakunda. Elācārya, according tradition, is the author of the famous Tamil classic Thirukkural; he composed
2.
1 See the Indroduction to the Ed. of Samayaprībhrtam and that of Şat-prūbhriadi
samgraha, Vol. 17 of MDJG; I, A., XIV, p. 15 etc. 2 See big Introduction to the Ed. of Pañcāstılāya, Vol. III, SBJ, Arraha, 1920. 3 I have every reason to think that this Elācārya, referred to in Mantralaksana, appears
to be the same as Helācārya, previously referred to, on whose work the Joy in of Indranandi was based; see p. iv. antc,
