History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c6.s2.13

c6.s2.13

To these may be added the Digambara Jaina work called *Lokavibhāga*³ discovered and noticed by R. Narasimhacharya till recently Director of the Mysore Archæological Department. It furnishes us with an important chronological datum from which the initial year of one of the early Pallava kings Simhavarman may be fixed. The work consists of eleven *prakaraṇas*, the last being *mokṣabhāga*. The opening verse is in praise of Jineśvara. The second verse gives, *kṣētra, kāla, tīrtha, pramāṇa-puruṣa* and their *charita* as the five divisions of a *purāṇa*; and in the third verse the author begins his subject, namely, the description of the world. All the MSS. of this work contain four stanzas which are important to Pallava chronology. The first stanza tells us that the science was first taught by Vardhamāna to Sudharma and others, that it was handed down in succession through a series of teachers, and that it was translated into Sanskrit by Rishi Simhasūri. The second stanza says that at a particular period, corresponding to certain planetary positions, Śarvanandi copied the work in the village named Pāṭalika of the Pāṇarāṣṭra. The third stanza gives us Śāka 380, corresponding to the twenty-second regnal year of Simhavarman, king of Kāñchī, as the year in which the work was completed. The fourth stanza informs us that the work consists of 1536 *anuṣṭub ślokas*. Śāka 380 is apparently the year in which the copying work was completed by Śarvanandi, and the author of the work Simhasūri probably flourished at an earlier period. Calculation shows that there cannot be any doubt about the correctness of the date. Pāṭalika, the village in which Śarvanandi copied the work, is identical with Pāṭalipura in South Arcot District at which, according to the *Periyapurāṇam*, there was a large Jaina monastery in the seventh century A.D.