Acharya Hemachandra
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Hemachandra Surī (Sanskrit: हेमचन्द्र सूरी) (1089–1172) was an Indian Jain scholar, poet, and polymath who wrote on grammar, philosophy, prosody, and contemporary history. Noted as a prodigy by his contemporaries, he gained the title Kalikāl Sarvagya, (all-knowing of the Kali age).
He was born in Dhandhuka, Gujarat (about 50 km south west of Ahmadabad), to Chachadev (father) and Pahini (mother). They named him Chandradeva. The Jain temple of Modhera Tirtha is located at his birthplace. As a young man, Chandradeva was initiated as a monk at a Jain temple, and he took the name Somachandra (Somachandra). He was trained in religious discourse, philosophy, logic and grammar. In 1110, he was ordained as an Acharya of the Shvetambara sect of Jainism and was given the name Acharya Hemachandra [1] .
At the time, Gujarat was ruled by Solanki dynasty. Hemachandra rose to prominence under the reign of 'Siddharaj' Jaysinh I, and was an advisor to his successor Kumarapala (1143–1173). During Kumarapala's reing, Gujarat became a reputed center of culture. Starting 1121, Hemachandra was involved in the construction of the Jain temple at Taranga. His influence on Kumarapala resulted in the Jain religion becoming the official religion of Gujarat, and animal slaughter was banned.
[edit] Works
A prodigious writer, Hemchandra wrote grammars of Sanskrit and Prakrit, texts on science and logic and practically all branches of Indian philosophy.
His best known work, the epic poem Tri-shashthi-shalaka-purusha-charitra (Lives of Sixty-Three Great Men), is a hagiographical treatment of the sequence of teachers and their pupils who were instrumental in defining the Jaina philosophical position, their ascetisicism and eventual liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth, as well as the legendary spread of the Jaina influence. It still serves as the standard synthesis of source material for the early history of Jainism.The appendix to this work, Parishista-parvan, contains his own commentary and is in itself a treatise of considerable depth (translated into English as The Lives of the Jain Elders by Richard Fynes (Oxford University Press, 1998)).
He also wrote:
- Kavyanushasana: poetics
- Desinamamala: a list of words of local origin
- Siddha-haima-shabdanushasana: Prakrit and Apabhramsha grammars
- Abhidhana-chintamani
- Dvyashraya-Mahakavya
Hemachandra, following the earlier Gopala, presented what is now called the Fibonacci sequence around 1150, about 50 years before Fibonacci (1202). He was considering the number of cadences of length n, and showed that these could be formed by adding a short syllable to a cadence of length (n−1), or a long syllable to one of (n−2). This recursion relation F(n) = F(n−1) + F(n−2) is what defines the fibonacci sequence.
