A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.59

c13.59

The Jains naturally enough aimed at vying with the classical epic, and we have in the *Yaçodharacarita*¹ of Kanakasena Vādirāja, a resident in the Draviḍa country, whose pupil Çrīvijaya flourished about a.d. 950, a Kāvya in four cantos with 296 verses. Its contents agree with the *Yaçastilaka* of the slightly later Somadeva, showing that the tale must have been then current; the two versions differ slightly in content but not in spirit. Another version of the legend is that of Māṇikya Sūri whose *Yaçodharacaritra*² belongs probably to the eleventh century at latest. It represents the work of a Çvetāmbara Jain of Gujarāt, as opposed to the Digambara version of Vādirāja, but the two accounts are independent. To the period between 1160 and 1172 belongs the enormous work of Hemacandra (1088–1172), the *Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita*,¹ which in ten Parvans handles the lives of the sixty-three best men of the Jain faith, the twenty-four Jinas, twelve Cakravartins, nine Vāsudevas, nine Baladevas, and nine Viṣṇudviṣas. The epic is long and wearisome, though the language is simple and not elaborate; the last Parvan, which deals with the life of Mahāvīra, comes nearer to sober history in that it gives us some definite information regarding the life of this worthy, if prolix, monk, who succeeded in converting to Jainism Kumārapāla of Gujarāt. Of unknown date is Haricandra, author of the *Dharmaçarmābhyudaya*,² in twenty-one cantos, on the life of the fifteenth Tīrthakara, Dharmanātha. Neminātha’s life is the subject of a Kāvya³ in fifteen cantos by the writer on poetics Vāgbhaṭa, probably in the twelfth century. There may be mentioned as having some claim to consideration the *Pāṇḍavacaritra* and *Mṛgāvatīcaritra*⁴ of Devaprabha Sūri of the school of Maladhārin in the thirteenth century, and Cāritrasundara Gaṇin’s *Mahīpālacaritra*,⁵ which claims to be a Mahākāvya in fourteen cantos of 1159 verses. These works, however, have value rather for their tales than for their literary merit. Of much higher merit in this regard, though it deals with a trite theme and the author evidently knew both Açvaghoṣa and Kālidāsa’s works well, is the Mahākāvya *Padyacūḍāmaṇi*⁶ ascribed to a Buddhaghoṣācārya. That this is the work of the famous Pāli scholar Buddhaghoṣa can hardly be seriously affirmed; the silence of our records of that able man would be inexplicable, and, if the attribution is not a case of false ascription, it remains that there must have lived a scholar of the same name, whose date at present evades definite determination.