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 282

CRITICAL TIMES
267
history of the Western Cālukyan king Someśvara I, it was during his reign that Sridharācārya of Narigunda composed the first Kannada work on astrology called Jätakatilaka. The reason why he composed it is given thus—That learned men told him that no one till that time had written a work in Kannada on astrology, and that, therefore, he was to write it. 1
Pūjyapāda, as we have already seen, had set an example in the field of medicine, although it must be admitted that there is no evidence to show that the work which he wrote was in Kannada. Another Jaina writer, who also wrote on medicine, was Pūjyapāda's sister's son Nāgārjuna, a famous alchemist and Tantric scholar. In the ninth century A.D. during the reign of the Rāştrakūta king Amoghavarşa I, Nộpatunga (A.D. 815-A.D. 877), Ugrāditya wrote Kalyāṇakāraka, a work on medicine that contains at the end a long discourse on the uselessness of flesh diet which the author, true to his Jaina feeling and conviction, is said to have delivered in the court of that Raştrakūta king. These writers may or may not have written their works in Kannada. But Kirtivarmā in about A.D. 1125 wrote in Kannada Go-vaidya, a treatise dealing with the diseases of cattle. Jagaddala Sāmanta in circa A.D. 1150 wrote his Karnataka Kalyānakāraka which was a Kannada rendering of Pūjyapāda's Kalyāņakāraka."
The Jainas have influenced not only the literature but the culture of southern India as well. In five spheres of south Indian life have they left indelible marks which it may not
1. Karicarite I, pp. 75-76 ; II, pp. 3-5; M. A. R. for 1911, p. 59, op. cit.
2. Kavicarite, I. pp. 11-12. Was he the same as Nāgārjuna of the Buddhist tradition, or the second of that name?
3. M. A. R. for 1922, p. 23. 4. Kavicarite, I. p. 165; II. pp. 15-16.