Religion and Culture of the Jains

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

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RELIGION AND CULTURE OF THE JAINS
recorded in Hemacandra's Parisiştaparvan and other works, on the other hand, Bhadrabāhu passed away when 170 years had elapsed since Mahāvira's nirvāņa. Although some Jain works place the end of the rule of the Nanda dynasty, which coincided with the close of the pontificate of Sthūlabhadra, 215 years after the nirvāņa of Mahāvira and thereby make Bhadrabāhu flourish in the Nanda period which is said to have lasted for 155 years, the tradition recorded by Hemacandra which places Candragupta Maurya's accession 155 years after Mahāvira's death and the evidence of some Jain writers10 and inscriptions from Mysore11 whieh make out a case for the contemporaneity of Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta Maurya appear more trustworthy.1 2 And what is most pertinent in the present context is, while the Digambara and Svetāmbara traditions considerably differ between themselves as regards the order and names of the spiritual successors of Mahāvīra and the exact length of the period covered by their pontificate, is the date they assign to the śrutake valin Bhadrabāhu falls in the fourth century B.C. Thus he lived over eight centuries before Varāhamihira who, as we have seen above, can be definitely assigned to the sixth century A. D. on the basis of the internal evidence of his own writings. 14
In view of the above chronological position of the caturdaśa-pūrvin Bhadrabāhu and Varāhamihira, the tradition recorded by Merutunga and Rājasekherasūri which represents
9 Ibid., pp. 339f. ; also M. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Vol. II, Calcutta, 1933, pp. 462, 476.
10 Cf. Harişeņa's Brhatkathākośa (Singhi Jain Series, Bombay, 1943), pp. 317-19.
11 B. Lewis Rice, Mysore and Coorg from Inscriptions (London, 1919), pp. 3-4.
12 For a discussion of the whole question, vide Kailash Chandra Shastri. op. cit., pp. 342-46 ; also V. A. Smith, Early History of India (Oxford, 1957), p. 151; Oxford History of India (Oxford, 1923), pp. 75-76; H. C. Raychaudhuri. Political History of Ancient India (6th ed., Calcutta, 1953), pp. 294-95.
13 Kailash Chandra Shastri op. cit., pp. 339-40.
14 For a detailed discussion of Varāhamihira's date, see A. M. Shastri, op. cit., pp. 4-18.