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XIV
PRAVACANASĀRA.
PT. JUGALKISHORE'S VIEW ON THE DATE.-Pandit Jugalkishore; in his excellent monograph on Samantabhadra, discusses the pros and cons of the various evidences utilised for settling the date of Kundakunda, and weighs the various probabilities with a view that the date of Kundakunda would help him to settle the date of Samantabhadra. The date of Kundakunda given by pattāvalis he holds to be unsatisfactory, because pattāvalís differ among them selves and often from other pieces of information available from other sources: He, like Premiji, works out the antecedent chronological details of the state. ment of Indranandi, in his Srutāvatāra, that Kundakunda wrote a commentary on the first three sections of Satichandāgama, and practically...concludes that Kundakunda cannot be earlier than 683. after Vīra, ie., 156 A. D. incidentally indicating the various discrepancies of pattāvalīs. Making possible concessions for the alternative beginnings of Vikrama era, he would concede the earlier limit that Kundakunda should be later than 133 Vikrama samvat, i. e. 76 A. D. Then he discusses the possibility of arriving at the date of Kundakunda on the tradition that Kundakunda wrote for S'ivakumāra Mahārāja. He indicates that much reliance cannot be put on that tradition as Kundakunda has not said anything to that effect. If the tradition is to be accepted, he favours the identification proposed by Prof. Chakravarti, showing that the date 528 A. D., arrived at by the identification proposed by Pathak, upsets the relative chronology of many Jaina authors, and showing that the interpretation of tadan- , vaya in those inscriptions with the chronological deduction proposed by Pathak is wrong, because even Padmanandi, the teacher of Sakalakīrti, of the 15th century A. D., is designated as tad (Kundakunda )-anvaya-dhurāna. Pt. Jugalkishore points to the fact that Kundakundānvaya is already mentioned in Merkara copper-plates of Saka 388. He is not ready to accept the position that Kundakunda had a name Elācārya. The date as given in the pattāvalīs goes against the various aspects of the tradition recorded in Srutāvatāra. Lastly he takes the fact that Kundakunda mentions' himself as the s'isya of Bhadrabāhu, whom he takes as the second Bhadrabāhu, who according to the pattāyalīs might have flourished 589 to 612 after Vīra; this period consequently leads him to the conclusion that Kundakunda might have flourished from 608 to 692 after Vīra, i. e., C. 81 to 165 A. D. This conclusion, he thinks, explains many obscure details.
A SUMMARY OF THE FACTS.--I have summarised the above vignore to see the various traditions utilised in their different aspects by scholars and the probable date at which they have arrived. The are the main traditional facts:
i . Kundakunda flourished after the division of the original Jaina church into Svetāmbaras and Digambaras.
ii. Kundakunda is the s'isya of Bhadrabāhu. - iii. On the authority of S'rutāvatāra, Padmanandi of Kundakundapura
1 See pp. 158 etc. of his Introduction to the Ed. of Ratna-Larandaka Srāval Fra of
Samantabbndra, Vol. 24'of MIDJG, Bombay, 1925; & part of the introductio n about Şamantabhadra, is also separately issued as 'Svámi Samantabhadry
