A History Less Touched

And  the moment arrived. Each Jain waits for this moment. I was finally going to visit the shravanbelgola, place where the largest single stone statue of the world resides, statue of Bhagwaan Bahubali, son of first jain tirthankara. This place is one of the most famous pilgrims of Jain’s in south india. By luck, the day we(me,aakarsh and pulkit) departed for it was also the first day of daslakshana parva.
On the way, from pulkit I came to know that it is the same place where Chandragupta spent his last days. During his last days, he took Diksha from the last ShrutKevali Sri BhadraBahu swami(the last person who got moksha according to jain shashtras). Well I had heard of Chandragupta Maurya in my history book when I was in class 7 or 8,cant recall, but not so much that I learnt later on and still learning.
After reaching there in shravanbelgola, we visited the vindhyagiri first where the statue of Bhagwaan Bahubali is present surrounded by hills. After that we went to chandragiri, also known as chhoti pahadi as it is smaller than the vindhyagiri. As the name is chandragiri, I thought the main temple present on this hill is of 8th Teerthankara ChandraPrabhu. However later on, it turned out that I was wrong. There are 14 jain temples on this hill built in different generations during 7th to 11th Century. All the temples are very beautiful and the statues inside the temples are of black stone. All the statues are very attractive in looks and the temples clearly reflect the ancient art. The 14th temple was built by Ashoka in rememberance of Chandragupta Mauurya, His grandfather. During his last days, as chandragupta was very influenced by the jainism, he bacame a disciple of swami bhadrabahu. Visiting the places, he came to shravanbelgola. As it seemed to Swami bhadrabahu that his end is near, he decided to stay there only and asked everyone to continue their path. Chandragupta stayed there to serve his guru. There is a cave of bhadrabahu from where he got the “moksha”. there are also the footprints of chandragupta who continued his “tapsya” after the death of his guru.
Chandragupta Maurya, first ruler of the “Akhand Bharat” whose boundaries extends from Assam and Bengal to Beyond Afghanistan. He arose in the era of Sikandar(Alexandar the great). He conquered over Sikandar’s Generals with the help of “Chanakya”, another mighty figure of Indian history. I was just wondering,Being the first ruler who brought the whole Indian sub continent under one flag, how can he remain so much unnoticed by historians. Maybe because of the shadow of Chanakya. Now i am very curious to learn about this first ruler of “akhand bharat”, cultural diversities of the time, few more mysteries relating the two famous religions of the time. History never amazed me so much…knowing what has been left behind. Wishing may be the book I am reading on Chandragupta amazes me in few more manners.  Amen.