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Personal Biography in Jaina Literature : 107
rulers (cakravartin), and holy men (Rși) from the ancient past, whereas the word prabandha signifies stories of monks and laymen from the historical age. However, as the genre-survey below will show, such a rigid distinction between the usages of the two terms is not feasible, since the word caritra also is used of biographies of historical persons. The earliest biography having the word caritra as part of its title is found in the Kalpasūtra.7 The Kalpasūtra is a Svetāmbara canonical text forming the eighth chapter of the Ayāradasão, viz. the fourth Chedasūtra. The Kalpasūtra is ascribed to Bhadrabāhu, the sixth patriarch of the Jaina community after Mahāvīra's death, who is said to have died 170 years after Mahāvīra's death. The first part of the Kalpasūtra is entitled Jinacaritra, “The deeds of the Jinas.” It commences with the vita of Mahāvīra, parts of which are adopted verbatim from, or have close correspondence to the earlier, partial Mahāvīra-biography of the Ayārāngasutta. The same chapter of the Kalpasūtra continues with other biographies of the earlier tīrthankaras, including Pārśva (Tīrthankara no. 23) (JACOBI, 1884:271-275), Arista-Neminātha (no. 22) (ibid.:276-279), and Rşabha (no. 1). For the other twenty Tīrthankaras, only their names are listed. In the fourth century, the Digambara-author Yati Vịşabha composed the Prakrit text Tiloyapaņņatti, which is the first text giving an outline of the lives of a group of figures referred to as the sixty-three great men (mahāpuruşa) or the sixty-three torch-bearers (Šalākāpuruṣa). 10 The sixty-three great men are the twenty-four Tīrthankaras, twelve universal monarchs (cakravartin), nine Väsudevas, nine Baladevas, and the nine foes of the Vāsudevas (Prativāsudeva). The Vāsudevas, Baladevas, and Prativāsudevas are all semi-divine kingly and princely Jaina figures related to the epics of Rāma and Krşņa, which thus ties Jaina mythology in with the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, and other Vaişņavaite Hindu epics of the Bhāgavatism that became popular in India from the fourth century CE onwards. 11
