Temple of Satrunjaya

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

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a temple at Bharoch. About the same time the king likewise built a temple at Khambat on the site of the convent where he had been received by Udayana Mehta and Hemacarya. At a subsequent date Kumarapala undertook a pilgrimage to Satrunjaya; on the way he erected a temple over the place of Hemacarya's birth at Danduka, called the "Cradle-Vihara"; and at Satrunjaya, under the direction of Sri Vagbhat, he caused to be formed a new road of approach to the sacred hill. Vagbhat also erected the Jaina temple at Vahadapura, called Tribhuvanapala Vihara after Kumarapala's father, and assigned land for the subsistence of its attendants.
After a reign of thirty-one years, the king Kumarapala died, it is said of leprosy at the age of about eighty-one but not before the death of his favourite adviser in his eighty-fourth year. After the powerful influence of such a man as Hemacandra had ceased, it was but natural to expect that the Brahmanas would not fail to take advantage of the opportunity to re-establish their power. Indeed Jaina and Brahmana traditions appear to indicate that even before the death of the great Jaina ascetic, the contest had begun on the part of the Brahmanas under the championship of Sankara Svami, a Dravida Brahmana, of whom many extravagant tales are related.
Kumarapala dying without male issue, was succeeded by Ajayapala, the son of Mahipala, Kumara's brother. He put himself at the head of the reaction against the Jainas, and began his reign by throwing down every temple that Kumarapala had raised, except the one at Taringa, near Abu, dedicated to Ajitanatha. The Jaina leaders were put to death; and Amrabhat armed his followers to protect himself but fell in the attempt. But Ajaya's career was too turbulent to last long; a door-keeper plunged his dagger into the heart of the king, and he was succeeded by his infant son Mula Raja II in A.D. 1176, in whose time Mahammad Shahabud-din Ghori marched by Uchha and Multan into Gujarat. Mula Raja's mother "Nayaki Devi, the daughter of Paramardi Raja, taking in her lap the child-king, maintained a struggle at a hill named Gaodorargadh and Bhima Deva, the brother of Ajayapala, who seemes to have been the leader of his sister-in-law's forces, defeated the Muslim invader.
Mula Raja was succeeded in A.D. 1178 by his uncle Bhima Deva II surnamed Bholo-the arrogant or insane, who was engaged in frequent feuds with the princes of Rajasthan. He was a Jaina and had the Jaina monk Amara Singha in his service. It is even said he persecuted the Brahmanas among the Yadavas of Parkar and the Shodas. In A.D. 1194 Kutb-ud-din, as general of Muhammad Ghori, invaded Gujarat, defeated Bhima Deva, and plundered Anahilapattana and the neighbour
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