Bhadrabahu

Position in the tradition

Bhadrabahu is counted the last of the shruta-kevalins — those who, without being omniscient themselves, knew the entire body of Mahavira's teaching including the fourteen Purvas. After him, both orders agree, the transmission began to fail, and the loss of the Purvas is dated from his death. He is conventionally placed in the fourth or third century BCE.

He is credited with the Kalpa Sutra and with the niryukti commentaries on canonical texts, though the attributions are traditional and the surviving forms are later.

The migration

Tradition holds that a twelve-year famine in Magadha caused Bhadrabahu to lead a body of mendicants south, to Karnataka, while others remained in the north under Sthulabhadra. On the migrants' return, the accounts continue, the two groups found their practice had diverged — the northerners having adopted clothing — and could not be reconciled.

Digambara tradition adds that Chandragupta Maurya accompanied Bhadrabahu, renounced his throne, and died by sallekhana at Shravanabelagola, where a hill and a cave are named for him. Historians treat the famine and migration as plausible in outline and the Chandragupta episode as unverified.

Assessment

Bhadrabahu is a hinge figure: the last point at which both orders agree the teaching was complete, and the person to whom both attach their accounts of how it ceased to be. That role makes him more important to the tradition's self-understanding than any securely known fact about him would warrant.