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INTRODUCTION.
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into the details of these traditions makes us all the more aware as to how we have to grope in darkness to settle the excat date of Kundakunda. So here I can say 'only this much that we cannot, on the authority of the traditions discussed above, insist too much that Kundakunda should be later than 683 years after Víra.
KUNDAKUNDA AS A CONTEMPORARY OF SIVAKUMĀRA DISCUSSED.. Now the fourth point about the possibility of Kundakunda's being a contemporary of a ruler S'ivakumāra Mahārāja. I agree with Pt. Jugalkishore in 'noting that Kundakunda has not referred to any such person, nor there is any indication to that effect in his works; his first commentator Amrtacandra, so far as we know, does not refer to any S'ivakumāra Mahārāja. It is only Jayasena (c. middle of the 12th century A. D.), and following him the Kanarese commentator Bālacandra,' that refer to S'ivakumāra Mahārāja, for whose enlightenment, Jayasena says, Kundakunda composed his Pañcāstikāya. Jayasena, in his commentaries on Pañcāstikāya and Pravacanasāra, mentions the name of S'ivakumāra or -Mahārāja ;2 but at times S'ivakumāra's personality plays a very dubious rôle as in the opening passage of Pravacanasāra, from which one is tempted to suspect whether Sivakumāra himself is the author of Pravacanasāra. It should be remembered that Jayasena's statement cannot deserve the credit of a contemporary evidence; and when we try to identify this S'ivakumāra with some king of the South Indian royal dynasties of the early centuries of the Christian era, it is taken for granted that Jayasena's statement, in all, probability, is based on some early tradition possibly genuine in character.. Dr. Pathak was the first to attempt an identification, and he proposed that this Sivakumāra Mahārāja should be identified with S'ivamrges'avarman of the Kadamba dynasty (about 528 A. D. according to Pathak). The patronage extended to Jainism and Jainas by Kadambas is well known; but that is no reason at all that Kundakunda should be put so late as this. This conclusion cannot be accepted for various reasons: first, that upsets some of the well recognised facts of Digambara chronology ; -secondly it is impossible that Kundakunda can be put in the 6th century, when Merkara copper plates of S'aka 388 mention Kundakundānvaya and give not less than six names of Ācāryas of that lineage ;- and this indicates that Kundakunda will have to be put at least a century, if not more, earlier than the date of the
plates. Perhaps it is to support this identification that he mis-inter
a words tad-anvaya in those copper-plates of the Rāstrakūta dynasty; ke in his interpretation is already noted above. More plausible is of Prof. Chakravarti, who identifies this Sivakumāra Mahārāja with
1 Relative dates of Jayasena and Bālacandra will be discussed later. 2 Pasclistikāya, Rāyachandra Jaina S'astramālā (RJS'), Bombay, Samyat 1972, pp, 1 and 6;
Pravacanasära, pp. 1, 19, 268, and 277; I have not been able to trace any mention of
Sivakumāra in his commentary on Samayasura. 3 Also about 475-490 A. D., gee G. M. Moraes: Kadamba Kna, chapter vir and the genel.
logy facing p. 15. 4 E. C., I, Coorg Inscriptions, No.1,
.
