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Jambu-A historical person...
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Being influeaced by the story told by śubhankara, the two wives retraced from the pleasures of the sex and senses, while śubhankara earned superhuman knowledge even remaining in the home because of intensely auspicious meditation. Thus prince Sama. rāicca, who showed to the parants the right course to be adopted by them through the description of such and the other stories, utlimately took initiation into the Jain order. The gods celebrated the occation. In a brief period after this, Samarāicca, through hard austerities and penance, secured omniscience and finally emancipation also. This story and Jambu's story are obviously indentical.
In the Dharmopadeśamālāvivaraṇa written by Jayasimha, 16 the stories of Napura pandita, Madhubindu-kapa-narakathā and of Dhansārthavaha are found in their entirety. Probably, these very stories of the Dharmopadešamālāvivaraṇa have formed the basis of the stories found in Gunapāla's Jambucariyam (JC). 17 The story of Jambu is very briefly referred to in this work.18
So far as Jambu's story is concerned, Gunapala's Jambucariyam comes next after the three works discussed before, namely, the Vasudevahiņdi, Uttarapurāņa, and Dharmopadešamālāvivarana. This Jambucariyam of Gumapala is an excellent work abounding in literary flavour, written in prose and verse, just like a necklace of pearls studded in between with gems of great value. Though the date of its composition is not finally settled, its editor veteran scholar Muni Jinavijayaji has put it somewhere in the 19th century or even before it of the Vikrama era. Pandita Nemicandraji has tried to assign the 9th century V.S. to it, two centuries earlier than Jinavijayaji's suggested date, 19 A comparative study of both Jambucariyam and Jambusāmicariu of Vira will help us to settle with greater certainty the problem of the date of Gunapala's Jambucariyam. We will be very near due truth if we say that Jambucariyam must have been composed a little earlier than Jambusāmicariu, that is to say, in 1096 (V.S.). Being drawn towards it due to its unquestioned prestige and popularity at that time, Vira must have studied it seriously in all its aspects and from all points of view and perhaps seeing Jambucariyam written in a difficult language in a prosaic style abounding in religious sermons and moral exhortations at eyery stage and on any opportunity and breeding boredom due to a staggering number of symbolic parables and illustrative examples to bring home a minor point, Vira would have thought of trying his hand at writing a unique work, having Jambu's story as its subject in the people's language such as the Apabhramga in a simple unsophisticated style making it as enchanting and attractive as possible.
When we study Jambucariyaṁ keeping in view Vasudevahiņdi and Uttarapurāņa, from the view-point of its presenation of the main story and the conception of various substories we find that it has an original, excellent, and extra-ordinarty theme to offer. In the first two Uddegyas we come across in it a fourfold division of the stories such as Dharmakathā, Arthakathā, Kāmakathā and Sankirna kathā just as we find in the Samirāiccık hi. The author, Gumapala, then proceeds with the narration of
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