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INTRODUCTION.
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it and gave to his disciple Tiruvalluvar who introduced it to Madura Sangha. Elalasingha, who is considered to be the literary patron of Tiruvalluvar, might be another name of Elacarya. 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 Dravida country. This identification of Elacarya or Kundakunda with the author of Kural (which is earlier than S'ilappaḍigāram and Manimēkhalai), which is not at all inconsistent with the possible age of Kural, would lend greater probability to the traditional date of Pattavalis that Kundakunda lived at the beginning of the first century A. D. Being a leader of the Draviḍasangha, 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 S'ivakumara Mahārāja, the royal disciple of Kundakunda, for whom, as all (?) the commentators of Prabrta-traya say, Kundakunda wrote his works. Prof. Chakravarti accepts Pathak's position that the church was divided into S'vetambaras and Digambaras, and perhaps the ordinary masses followed the Vedantic form of Visņu-cult; but he opposes the identification of S'ivakumāra Mahārāja with S'ri Vijaya S'iva Mrges'a 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 S'ivakumāra Mahārāja might be the same as king S'ivaskandha, which is merely another form of S'ivakumara, of the Pallava dynasty. He also figuies as Yuva Mahārāja, which is also curiously identical with Kumara Mahārāja. Other circumstantial evidences are also favourable. Conjeepuram was the capital of Pallavas who ruled over Thondamandalam or Thondainadu which was looked upon as the land of the learned; its metropolis did attract many Dravidian scholars such as the author of Kural etc.; the kings of Conjeepuram were patrons of learning: since the early centuries of the Christian era upto the 8th century, from Samantabhadra to Akalanka, we that Jainism was being propagated round about that place. It is not
le, therefore, that the Pallava kings at Conjeepuram, during the first
this era, were patrons of Jaina religion or were themselves Jainas Further the body of Mayidavõlu grant is in Prakrit dialect, and it is issued by S'ivaskandhavarman of Conjeepuram. The use of Siddham in the beginning of the grant and its close similarities with Mathura inscriptions show the Jaina inclinations of the ruler. From various other epigraphical records also it is clear that these kings had Prakrit as their court language. Thus Prof. Chakravarti concludes that Kumdakundācārya wrote his Prabhṛtatraya S'ivakumara Mahārāja, who was most probably the same as S'ivaan of the Pallava dynasty.
for
