A History of the Canonical Literature of the Jainas c7.12

c7.12

² In the Jaina literature we come across references about three twelve-year famines prior to this. They occurred in the time of Bhadrabāhusvāmin, Ārya Suhastin (c. Vira Saṃvat 291) and Vajrasvāmin respectively. The first of them was terrible; for, it made all the Munis except Bhadrabāhusvāmin forget Diṭṭhi-vāya (for details see Ch. IV). As regards the other two famines, it appears that it did not affect the knowledge of the Jaina scriptures in the case of the servivors. But these famines must have severely told upon the scarcity of food—an inference we can draw from the following lines occurring in the Cuṇṇi (pt. I, p. 404) on Avassaya:—