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 95

80
MEDIEVAL JAINISM
commemorates a gift to the basadi named Malli Jinalaya by the same monarch.1 This record, therefore, confirms the view that king Vişņu was a devout Jaina even in A.D. 1129. Indeed, there is one more record which adds to the testimony that king Vişņu, whatever his patronage to Vaisnavism may have been, continued till the end of his rule, to be a pious Bhavya. This inscription is the Pärśvanatha basti record hailing from Bastihalli, near Halebiḍ (i.e., Dorasamudra itself) and dated A.D. 1133. In connection with a famous Jaina temple in the Hoysala capital built by one of the many great Jaina generals of king Vişņu, it relates that the latter christened his son prince Vijaya Narasimhadeva after the god Vijaya Parsvadeva, and granted the village of Javagal for a Jinalaya in the capital Dorasamudra which we shall describe in a later context.2
King Narasimha I who had been crowned from the day of his birth, ascended the throne on the death of his illustrious father king Vişņu in A.D. 1141.3 The greatness of the Hoysala Empire was now maintained more by the reputation of the famous Vişņuvardhana Deva and the loyalty of his generals rather than by any military prowess or political sagacity on the part of king Narasimha. One of the most capable generals of the age was the Jaina commander Hulla whose intense devotion to the Jina dharma, which we shall describe in detail presently, was, we may
gara who was the guru of Vadirāja. It says that Sripāla, though an expositor of all sciences, accepted also the title Traividya (versed in the three sciences of grammar, logic, and philosophy). (E. C. II, 67, p. 28.) How Sripala came to be assigned to this age cannot be made out.
1. M. A. R. for 1911, p. 43.
2. E. C. V, Bl. 124, p. 83. 3. Rice, My. & Coorg, p. 101. 4. Ibid.