01South to Chandragiri
The Digambara account says Bhadrabahu read the signs of a twelve-year famine in Magadha and took several thousand monks south to Karnataka. Chandragupta Maurya gave up his throne and went with him as a monk under the name Prabhachandra. On the smaller hill at Shravanabelagola, which tradition says was named Chandragiri after the king, the aged acharya knew his end was near, sent the sangha on, and took the vow of sallekhana, the fast unto death. A cave on that hill is still shown as Bhadrabahu’s, with his footprints carved in the rock. An inscription of about 600 CE on Chandragiri, among the oldest there, records the migration.
02Two traditions, one acharya
Svetambaras remember him differently. In their account Bhadrabahu went to Nepal to practise the mahaprana meditation, and Sthulabhadra came to him there to learn the fourteen Purvas, the oldest layer of the scripture. Svetambaras also hold him the author of the Kalpa Sutra, recited every year at Paryushana, which contains the life of Mahavira. The two sanghas date his death a few years apart, about 160 to 170 years after Mahavira’s nirvana. The split between Digambara and Svetambara is often traced to the years of that famine, when one part of the sangha went south and another stayed in Magadha.
