Medieval Jainism

SR No.: 011082
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Bhasker Anand Saletore
Publisher: Karnataka Publishing House
Total Pages: 448
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 27 MB

Page 228

POPULAR SUPPORT
213 amidst equally orthodox circumstances. This was Abhayacandra Siddhāntadeva who, both according to the above records and the one under review, was the śruta guru of Bălacandra Panditadeva. It is said of Abhayacandra that with the pramāņa-dvayi he expounded prosody, logic, vocabulary, grammar, philosophy, and rhetoric. He was a great disputant. On the night of the date specified (A.D. 1279) knowing it was his time for the tomb, forsaking all food, purifying his body, without fear, so that all the world applauded, taking to the palyankāsana, as if saying, “I will certainly show my brightness in heaven", Abhayacandra, the great Siddhāntika, died. And once again all the Jaina citizens of Dorasamudra raised a high monument for him in reverence.1
And twenty years after his death, the pious Jaina citizens of Dorasamudra once again lost an equally remarkable Jaina teacher. He was Rāmacandra Maladhārideva, the senior disciple of Bālacandra Panditadeva. The epigraph gives a unique account of this austere guru. “In walking he did not swing his arms; he did not go the length of a yoke without looking well before him ; women and gold he never touched ; rough words he never spoke ; night and day he never forgot himself and uttered boastful words ; (and he) never fell into the net of ignorance". Rāmacandra Maladhārideva discoursed to his beloved pupil Subhacandradeva on the śreyomärga. Like his great guru Bālacandra, Rāmacandra informed the four castes of the exact time of his death ; and commanding them to cultivate dharma, and having performed all the rites of samnyasana from his palyankāsana, he died in A.D. 1300. And once again the Jaina citizens of Dorasamudra had images of their leader made together with
1. E. C. V 133, p. 88.