discipline was of supreme importance, and asceticism and austerity of no avail. Mahāvīra, on the contrary, laid the greatest stress on asceticism. In its glow karma could be burnt up, and only through austerities could one become a Tīrthaṅkara.
Mahāvīra’s first disciple was Gautama Indrabhūti, who in turn became a Kevalī, and whose story we tell later. After instructing Gautama, Mahāvīra set off on his preaching tours in real earnest, and taught his Rule with great acceptance to all his warrior kinsfolk. Like Buddha, he preached first to the rich and aristocratic, and though his followers to-day are to be found more amongst the middle classes, his earliest supporters seem to have been rulers and petty kings. This may have been because they too disliked Brāhman pretensions and were pleased that one of their own kinsfolk should lead a revolt against them. Mahāvīra's connexions through his mother Triśalā must have been invaluable to him at the beginning of this work; indeed, Dr. Jacobi thinks that the real meaning of the story about the removal of the embryo from one mother to another was to hide the fact that Mahāvīra was really the son of another and far less highly connected wife of the king, and to pretend that he was the son instead of the stepson of Triśalā.[1] This of course the Jaina indignantly deny. The Digambara and Śvetāmbara legends give the names of the different rulers Mahāvīra visited, and tell how Ċetaka, king of Videha, became a patron of the order, and Kuṇika, king of Aṅga, gave him the most cordial welcome, and how, when he travelled as far as Kauśāmbī, he was received with the greatest honour by its king Satānika, who listened with deep interest to his preaching, and eventually entered his order. The Digambara claim that in thirty years he converted to Jainism Magadha, Bihār, Prayāga, Kauśāmbī, Ċampāpurī and many other powerful states in North India. They believe that he did not travel alone,
- ↑ See Introduction, S. B.E., xxii, p. xxxi.
