development of Jaina art and literature. Many celebrated Jaina poets
flourished under them. Jinasena and Gunabhadra composed their
Mahapurana at the time of king Amoghavarsha, whose great Jaina
work Ratnamalika became very popular with people of all sects. It is
said that Amoghavarsha became a Jaina monk in the latter part of his
life. According to epigraphic evidence one of his successors, Indra IV,
died in the traditional Jaina fashion, i.e. by committing sallekhana or
fasting to death.
7. About the year 1100 AD Jainism gained great ascendancy in Gujarat.
There the Chalukya king Siddharaja (1094–1143), also known as
Jaya-simha, the popular hero of the Gujarat legend and the ruler of
Anhilwara, and his successor Kumarapala were great patrons of the
Jainism. They openly professed Jainism and encouraged literary and
temple-building activities of the Jainas in Gujarat. At the court of
Kumarapala lived the famous Jaina scholar Hemachandra who was
the royal pandit and annalist. Hemachandra was evidently a man of
great versatility; among his works are philosophical treatises,
grammars of Sanskrit and Prakrit, lexica of both the languages, a
treatise on poetics, and narrative poetry. The longest of his poems is
the Trisastisalaka Purushacharita (Deeds of the Sixty-three Eminent
Men), an enormous work telling the stories of the twenty four
tirthankaras and of other eminent figures in Jaina mythology,
including the patriarchs and various legendary world emperors. The
last section of this forms an independent whole, ‘The Deeds of
Mahavira’, and records the life story of the historical founder of
Jainism. In its course Mahavira is said to have prophesied in his
omniscience the rise to power of Hemachandra’s patron Kumarapala,
and to have forecast the reforms he would inaugurate.
8. During the Muslim period, the Jainas particularly increased in the
states of Rajputana, where they occupied many important offices as
generals and ministers.
Jaina Literature
The Jainas utilised the prevailing spoken languages of different times at