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the status of the holy of the holies of the Svetambara sect, and decidedly so by medieval times. A most distinguished Śvetambara Jaina epistemologist and hymnist of the early fifth century who authored Sanmati-prakaraṇa (Prakrit) as well as the Nayāvatāra and the 32 dvātrimśikās (Sanskrit) was Siddhasena Diväkara (active c. A.D. 400-444). His field of work principally was Mālavadeśa, though there are late biographical references of his connections also with Brgukaccha in Lāṭa.
The Temples in Kumbhāriyā
As the evidence of the Svetambara Jaina metal images from Ākoṭā near Vadodara (Baroda) indicates, the earliest image found therefrom is stylistically dateable to c. A.D. 500. From Khedbrahmā in north Gujarat, came to light a few schistose Jina images, which appear, on the basis of their style, of the 6th century, one now set up in the Digambara Jaina temple in Idar and the other, also in the Digambara temple, located on the nearby granite hill. These two provide the archaeological evidence of the continuality of the Jaina religion in late Gupta/postGupta or what amounts to the same thing, early Maitraka age in Gujarat. An unknown author composed 'niryuktis' on ten different agamas, in c. A.D. 525. Soon after that, the bhāṣyas on the Avaśyaka-sūtra, Pañcakalpa, Niśītha-sūtra, Bṛhadkalpa, Vyavahara-sūtra etcetera and the Tīrthāvakālika-prakīrṇaka were composed.
Two Śvetambara contemporaries of considerable eminence of this period, we now enter into the latter half of the sixth century, were the logician, dialectician, and epistemologist Mallavādī kṣamāśramaņa of Valabhī and of Nagendra kula and the agamic scholiast of high distinction and eminence, Jinabhadra gani kṣamāśramaṇa of Nivṛtti kula, both of whom were caityavāsī/abbatial pontiffs. Mallavādī had defeated the Buddhists in Brgukaccha and had composed a very important work on epistemology, entitled the 'Dvādaśāra-nayacakra', with an autocommentary, as also a commentary in Sanskrit on Siddhasena Divākara's justly famous and profound epistemological work, the above-noted Sanmati-prakaraṇa. Jinabhadra gani's compositions in Prakrit such as the Jītakalpa, the Vises-Avaśyaka-bhāṣya, the Viseṣaṇavati, the Bṛhad-samgrahaṇī etcetera are famous as authoritative works, in sequential order, on Jaina monastic rules, doctrines, dogmas, and cosmography. He also got made two metal images of the Jinas that were set up in the Jaina temple in Ankotaka. While Jinabhadra, according to the hagiographical tradition, had passed away in c. A.D. 594, a copy of his most famous work, the Vises-Avaśyaka-bhāṣya, later had been deposited, in A.D. 609 to be precise, in the Jaina temple at Valabhi as per the colophon of one of its early manuscripts traced from the library of manuscripts in Jaisalmer. Apparently, during the late sixth or early seventh century,
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