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the tīrthankara Sīmandhara, this time mediated by four goddesses who fly to the continent of Mahāvideha to consult him.60
Two important narrative themes can be seen in the hagiographies of Abhayadeva: his contraction of leprosy, or some such disease, either before or after writing his scriptural commentary and the role of the tīrthankara Sīmandhara in assisting in exegesis.
In Prabhācandra's version, Abhayadeva's ailment is the result of a combination of exhaustion and his exiguous dietary régime undertaken in the course of producing his commentary, while one of the Kharatara Gaccha sources ascribes it to the fruition of some sort of negative karma.61 The later Kharatara writers combine these explanations and claim that Abhayadeva originally fell ill because of a dietary penance imposed by his teacher as expiation for a lapse in correct behaviour in preaching when he had overstimulated his audience through use of the rasa technique of traditional Indian aesthetics.62 The motif of suffering from leprosy and other such afflictions as a result of previous actions or through fasting is common in Jainism, with the universal emperor Sanātkumāra and the princes Kandarika and Pundarika being famous examples of both possibilities.63 Jain poets, including Prabhācandra, also seem to have been largely responsible for the development of the famous story of the Hindu poet Mayūra who became free from leprosy after praising Sūrya, the god of the sun.64In the particular case of Prabhācandra's account of Abhayadeva, there seems to be intended a parallel between the state of his bodily (anga) health and his production of commentary on the nine anga texts, and physical cure and retrieval of scriptural meaning can here be regarded as hagiographically linked.
For both Jinapāla and Prabhācandra, the two main hagiographers, an important element in validating Abhayadeva's exegetical activity is the connecting of him to elevated sources of Jain authority and his achievement is presented by them as not far short of that of the ganadharas, the disciples of Mahāvīra who successively redacted the scriptures.65 Of most marked significance in this respect is the association of Abhayadeva's commentary, or at least the solving of difficulties within it, with the tīrthankara Sīmandhara who is, according to standard Jain tradition from approximately the beginning of the medieval period, currently living and preaching in the parallel continent of Mahāvideha. 66
At the conclusion of an exemplary paper delineating the various components of the mythology of the future Buddha Maitreya, Padmanabh Jaini has drawn attention to a comparable Jain tradition concerning the future tīrthankara at the beginning of the next world era (utsarpini), whose name is Mahāpadma.67 Although there is much data scattered
