Bhadrabāhu
A figure from the books
#Bhadrabahu
Bhadrabāhu · trad. 433–357 BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Jain ācārya — head of the monastic order — and by both branches' testimony the last śrutakevalin, the last man who held the entire scriptural canon complete in memory.
“The man remembered as the last to know everything is the tradition's own explanation of why its scriptures are incomplete — a religion honest enough to build the loss of its own canon into its founding story.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“A canon that exists only in living memory dies one holder at a time. Bhadrabāhu was the last holder — and, reading a twelve-year famine in advance, he moved twelve thousand monks south and planted Jainism in Karnataka, where it still stands.”
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