Introduction to volume 5

Book VIII of the Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra, the Nemināthacaritra, includes also the lives of Kṛṣṇa, the ninth Vāsudeva, Balarāma, the ninth Balabhadra, and Jarāsandha, the ninth Prativāsudeva. It gives more space to Kṛṣṇa than to Neminātha himself and is, in fact, a Jain Harivaṃśa. The origin of the Harivaṃśa is told in 6.7.12-110 of the Triṣaṣṭi. The first chapter of Book VIII narrates the previous incarnations of Neminātha and then he is practically forgotten until Chapter IX. Chapters II-IV are a long wearisome account of Vāsudeva’s many marriages. Chapters V-VIII concern Kṛṣṇa’s affairs, with much repetitious detail of battles, especially the one in which Jarāsandha is killed. However, Hemacandra manages as usual to introduce interesting episodes which redeem the tiresome narrative of unromantic marriages and fighting. The founding and destruction of Dvārakā are interesting and offer data for the much-discussed site of Kṛṣṇa’s Dvārakā.

Book IX includes the lives of Brahmadatta, the twelfth Cakravartin, and of Pārśvanātha. The life of Brahmadatta is best known to Europeans from Jacobi’s Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Māhārāṣṭrī, translated in Meyer’s Hindu Tales. Hemachandra’s account agree in general with that one, but not in all details. There is a Brahmadattakathā also in the Yogaśāstra commentary, pp. 75-90, Bhavnagar edition.

The rest of Book IX gives a detailed account of Pārśvanātha’s life, into which much doctrinal and didactic material is introduced. There are many Pārśvanāthacaritras, but the one most available is Bhavadevasūri’s, which has been summarized and treated by M. Bloomfield in The Life and Stories of the Jaina Savior Parçvanātha. Hemacandra’s version is much briefer, but contains many of the subordinate incidents of the longer work.