Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): D C Sirkar
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 74

SM. R. CHAMPAKALAKSHMI
5995
His date is a matter of controversy, B. L. Rice placing hima about the first half of the 7th century as the spiritual preceptor of the Ganga king Durvinita and Narasimhachar assigning him: to the latter half of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century A.D.98 If the latter date is the correct one, then he may have been the same as Vajranandin's preceptor.
Akalanka was the next Jain teacher, whose activities at Kāñci are said to have resulted in the complete annihilation of the Buddhists about the close of the 8th century A.D. He is said to have defeated the Buddhists in disputation at the court of king Himaśitala and procured their expulsion from South India.34 Numerous epigraphs from Karņāțaka refer to this.. victory of Akalanka ; but the identity of king Himaśītala remains a matter of uncertainty. Akalanka is believed to have been a contemporary of the Rāșțrakūța monarch Dantidurga and hence is assigned to the latter part of the 8th century A.D.85
According to one of the Mackenzie Manuscripts, Himasitala was a king of Kāñci. Akalanka, it is said, was partly educated in the Buddhists' college at Pontagai, disputed with them in the presence of the last Buddhist prince Himaśitala and defeated them. The prince became a Jain and the Buddhists were banished to Kandi.36 The Buddhist college is. said to have existed at Alipaļaitāngi, a Buddhist settlement between Jina-Kāñci and Arcot (?). The two Jain students, Akalanka and Niskalanka, who had come to study there, quarrelled with the Buddhist teachers and left the school. A kalanka went to Sravaņa Belgola and studied Jain philosophy, became a monk and returned to the east. He defeated the Buddhist teachers in a learned assembly presided over by the king. 57 Karandai or Tiruppasambūr, about twelve miles from
33 B. A. Saletore, op. cit., pp. 19, 22. 34 M. S. Ramaswamy Ayyangar, Studies in South Indian Jainism, p. 31. 35 Ibid., p. 33.
36 Mackenzie Manuscripts, Vol. I, ed. T. V. Mahalingam, Madras, 1972.
37 Loc. cit.; W. Taylor, Catalogue Raisonné of the Mackenzie Collecom tion, pp. 423-24.