The One Death and Many Lives of King Kumārapāla: Biography and Resilience in Jainism

When, in 1160, the Caulukya king Kumārapāla (r. 1142–1172) officially took the twelve vows of a Jain layman under the guidance of his spiritual teacher, the Śvetāmbara monk Hemacandra, Jainism enjoyed an unprecedented royal patronage for about twelve years, that manifested itself in many ways, such as the building of a thousand Jain temples or the promulgation of the amāri or prohibition to kill living beings throughout the Caulukya kingdom as well as its vassal principalities. However, the successive deaths of Hemacandra and Kumārapāla within a span of six months not only plunged the Jain community into a deep mourning, but they also heralded a severe setback, as Kumārapāla’s successor Ajayapāla (r. 1172–1176) is said to have given back royal favor to Brahmins and persecuted Jains in many ways. At the same time, Jain writers started to commemorate Kumārapāla’s spectacular conversion and exemplary rule through various literary media, such as theater (Yaśaḥpāla’s Moharājaparājaya , written and performed under Ajayapāla’s reign) or historical anecdotes inserted in the Prabandha collections: for instance, the fourth part of Merutuṅga’s Prabandhacintāmaṇi (1305) deals to a large extent with that king’s life. Several authors also wrote independent biographies of Kumārapāla – sometimes concurrently, as instanced by Jayasimḥasūri’s Kumārabhūpālamahākāvya (1365) and Somatilakasūri’s Kumārapālacarita (1367) – wherein they retold the king’s life and death and often included his previous and future lives as well. What I will argue in this article is that all these biographical texts were intended to alleviate and even compensate for the dramatic loss of this ideal Jain king by continuously recalling his pious reign and recasting it within the broader frame of a spiritual journey over many lives.