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The Origin of the Story of Rama in Jain Literature
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Lakşmi (Sitā) is born as the daughter of Mandodar) on account of a curse: "Nārada, while attending a concert in heaven, is hustled aside by Lakşmi's attendants, who are conducting her to her seat. He promptly curses her to become incarnate as the daughter of a Raksasa."
This fantastic birth-story is greatly different from that given by Gunabhadra where Sità is born of Mandodari as the daughter of Rāvana. The Dasaratha Jätaka is definitely older than Gunabhadra's Uttara-Puràņa. But it is a distorted version of the story of Rāma as given in the Mahabharata and the Vålmiki-Rāmāyana. So inerely because the later history of Rama is absent both in the Dasaratha Jitaka and Guņabhadra version we cannot say that the former is the source of the latter. It is true the Jätaka speaks of Dasaratha as a ruler of Varanasi, and Gunabhadra represents him as shifting his capital from Varanasi to Ayodhyā. But this is too slender a thread to connect the two stories. The Jätaka speaks of Rama and Sitä as brother and sister, staying in the Himalaya mountain for years together at Dasaratha's suggestion, and the marriage of Rama and Sita
brother and sister! All this is absent in the Jain version. So properly speaking we cannot point to Adbhuta-Ramayana and Daśaratha Jätaka as Gunabhadra's source for his Rāma-story.
We might account for these divergences in a different way: The birth of Sita is a mystery according to Valmiki's Rāmāyana. The Jain poets wanted to give a realistic interpretation of her birth. Vimala straightway calls her the daughter of Janaka and Videhá born in a natural manner. Gunabhadra (or the Acarya who first gave the version found in the Uttara-Purana) makes Sitä the daughter of Rāvana and Mandodari. He gives the reason why Sitá was abandoned by the parents and how Janaka and his te Vasudhä сome across this foundling! This change introduced by the Jain poet has something dramatic about it. A father falling in love with his own daughter, being unaware of the fact that she is his own daughter is psychologically not improbable. And as far as we know, Sanghadāsa (not later than 609 A.D.) is the first poet to represent Sită as Ravana's daughter. It is not unlikely that this account of the birth of Sitā and the names of some of Rāvana's ancestors such as Sahasragriva and others, have been taken over by Guņabhadra (or his predecessor whom he follows) from Sanghadása's version. A guess may be hazarded that Sanghadāsa possibly had in mind the story of Karna's birth, when he relates the account of Sītā's birth. Karņa is generally regarded as the son of a charioteer. The Mahabharata story, however, goes that in reality he was begotten by Surya. the Sun-god, and Kunts, when the latter was as yet a maiden, in a miraculous manner, so that Kunti's virginity was not violated. But after she had given birth to Karna, she was filled with shame. and put the boy out on the river in a little water-tight basket. There he was found by a charioteer, who brought him up. Karna is, therefore, really an elder brother to the Pandavas. The names Sahasragriva and others as the ancestors of Ravana were probably invented with a view to making the name Dasagriva not sound utterly strange or fantastic.
