Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

Author(s): Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

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YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
atron properly so called. Somadeva was a Jaina Ācārya and respectfully mentions his gurt. He was, besides, a political thinker, and in his Nitiväkyāmrto pays homage to the state and not to any king. It is, Łowever, certain that he was intimately acquainted with court life, and may have passed some time in the Răstrakūta capital. The court life so minutely Cescribed by him in Book III of his Yasastilaka does not apply to a petty feudatory chief like that of Gangadhārā, and can be true only of a sovereign of imperial status, who receives embassies from foreign courts, declares war against i efractory kings, and has at his disposal regiments drawn from different parts of Hindustan Somadeva, the author of Nitiväkyāmrta, vas a patriotic citizen of the Rāştrakūta empire, and gave much thought to the principles of state-craft and the well-being of the state, and in his great romance he gives a picture of the imperial court, besides throwing sidelights on the problems of government affecting war and peace.
The tenth century, like its predecessor, was a flourishing period of Jaina literature in Sanskrit and Prākrit, and in Kanarese as well. Confining ourselves to the epoch of Somadeva, we may safely assume it to coincide with the reign of Krsna III from 939 to 968 A, D., and within these limits we come across several distinguished names in the annals of scholarship and literature. In 941 the famous Kavarese poet Pampa wrote his two poems, Ādipurând, which relates the history of the first Tīrthaṁkars, and Vikramarjuna-vijaya, which tells the story of the Mahābhārata, or rather that of Arjuna. About the year 950 Põnna, the second great Kanarese poet of the century, wrote his Säntipurāna, which relates the legendary history of the sixteenth Tirthamkara, under the patronage of Krşņa III who gave the poet the honorific title of Ubhaya-kavi-cakravartin for his proficiency in Kanarese and Sanskrit. Quite at the beginning of the reign of Krşņa III, Indranandin wrote in Sanskrit a work called Jvälāmalini-kalpa dealing with a mystic fire-cult associated with the goddess Jvālāmālini. The work was composed in 939 A. D. at Māngakheta and refers to Krşņarāja.
Among the immediate contemporaries of Somadeva we come across two distinguished names: Puşpadanta and Muñjārya Vādighanghala Bhatta. We have already referred to the former, who commenced his Mahapurāna in 59 A. D. under the patronage of Krşņa III's minister Bharata, and wrote twother works, Jasaharacariu, which, like Somadeva's Yakastilaka, relates
i Ty T4194074 76779 57: 2 Sor below Chapters IV and V. 3 Rice: Kanarese Literature, 4 Hiralal: Catalogue of Sanskrit and. Prakrit Manuscripts in C. P. and Berar,
p. XXX.