The Rashtrakutas and their Times c23.s2.25

c23.s2.25

Quite a galaxy of Jain writers flourished in the court of the Jain emperor Amoghavarsha I, who was well known for several centuries as a great patron of literature.⁴⁰ Jinasena, his spiritual preceptor, is the author of *Harivans'a*, which was finished in 783 A.D. He has placed the workers in the field of Ancient Indian history under great obligation by mentioning the contemporary kings that flourished in that year in the colophon of this work. He did not live to finish his *Adipurāṇa*, which had to be completed by his des ciple Guṇachandra, who was the spiritual preceptor of Lokāditya, the governor of Banavasi 12000.⁴¹ The *Adipurāṇa* is a Jain work dealing with the lives of Jain Tīrthankaras and saints. In his *Pārs'vābhyudaya* Jinasena has performed the wonderful feat of utilising each line of the love-poem *Meghadūta* for narrating the life of the Jain saint Pārśva. The concluding line of each verse in Jinasena’s poem has been borrowed from the successive stanzas of the *Meghadūta*. The *Amoghavṛtti* of S'ākaṭāyāna,⁴² a work on grammar, and the *Gaṇitasārasangraha* of Vīrāchārya,⁴³ a work on mathematics, were also composed in the reign of Amoghavarsha I. The *Kavirājamārga*, the first work in the Canarese on poetics, has been attributed to this emperor, but whether he was himself its author or merely its inspirer, is still a matter of controversy.⁴⁴ The authorship of the *Pras'nottaramālā* is also in dispute, as it has been variously attributed to S'ankarāchārya, Vimala, and Amoghavarsha I. The colophon of the Tibetan translation of this booklet shows, as Dr. F. W. Thomas has pointed out, that Amoghavarsha was believed to be its author at the time it was rendered into the Tibetan.⁴⁵ It is, therefore, very likely that he was its real author.