The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s15.114

c8.s15.114

the neighbourhood of Siva. And, on their refusing to desist, he then began to sing the praises of Siva, as the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer, and as the god whose essence pervades the whole universe. The Jains then challenged him to decapitate himself and offer his head to Siva, in the presence of all the people; promising that, if his head should be restored to him, they would admit that Siva was indeed the one god, and Ekantada-Ramayya his true disciple. And, being asked to wager something against his head, they further bound themselves by a writing on a palmyra leaf, to demolish their Jina and set up an image of Siva, in the event of his success. Then, singing the praises of Siva, Ekantada-Ramayya cut off his own head with a scimitar, and laid it at the feet of his god. On the seventh day, it was found by all the people that Ekantada-Ramayya's head was restored to him, without a scar. The Jains, however, failed to keep their word. And so he himself, in spite of their guards, their horses, their chieftains, and the troops that they sent against him, broke off the head of their Jina, and presented it as an offering to his own god, and, as is gathered from subsequent parts of the record, set up an image of Siva under the name of Vira-Somanatha, at Ablur, and built a temple for it, "as large," the record says, "as a mountain."¹ The Jains went and complained to Bijjala, who became much enraged, and sent for Ekantada-Ramayya, and questioned him as to why he had committed so gross an outrage on the Jains. Thereupon Ekantada-Ramayya produced the writing on the palmyra leaf, which he asked Bijjala to deposit in his treasury, and offered that, if the Jains would wager their seven-hundred temples, including the Anesejjeya-basadi,² he would repeat the feat; and he undertook even to allow his opponents to burn his head, and still to recover it. Wishing to see the spectacle, Bijjala called all the learned men of the Jain temples together, and bade them wager their temples, repeating the conditions on a palmyra leaf. The Jains, however, would not face the test again. So Bijjala, laughing at them, dismissed them with the advice that henceforth they should live peaceably with their neighbours, and gave Ekantada-Ramayya, in public assembly, a jayapatra or certificate of success. Also, pleased with the unsurpassed daring with which Ekantada-Ramayya had displayed his devotion to Siva, he laved Ramayya's feet, and granted to the temple of Vira-Somanatha a village named Gagave in the Sattalige seventy in the Banavasi twelve-thousand.³ Subsequently, the record says, when the Western Chalukya king