The Heart of Jainism/Chapter 4

by Alice Margaret Sinclair Stevenson

CHAPTER IV

MAHĀVĪRA'S PREDECESSORS AND DISCIPLES

Pārśvanātha.Pārśvanātha, the Tīrthaṅkara who immediately preceded Mahāvīra, may also have been an historical person. Very probably he did something to draw together and improve the discipline of the homeless monks who were outside the pale of Brāhmanism, much as St. Benedict did in Europe. If so, he was the real founder of Jainism, Mahāvīra being only a reformer who carried still further the work that Pārśvanātha had begun.

The Jaina say that Pārśvanātha was born in what is now the city of Benares about 817 B.C. His father, Aśvasena, was the king of that town, and to his mother, Queen Vāmā, were granted the wonderful dreams which always foretell the birth of a Tīrthaṅkara. Before he was born, his mother, lying in the dark, saw a black serpent crawling about by her side, and so gave her little son the name of Pārśva. All his life Pārśvanātha was connected with snakes, for when he was grown up he was once able to rescue a serpent from grave danger. A Brāhman ascetic was kindling a fire, without noticing whether in so doing he was destroying life or not, when Pārśvanātha happened to pass and drew from the log the Brāhman was lighting a poor terrified snake that had taken up its abode in the wood.

Whilst in the world, Pārśvanātha bore himself with great credit; he was a brave warrior and defeated the Yavana king of Kaliṅga, and he eventually married Prabhāvatī, daughter of Prasannajita, king of Ayodhyā.

At the age of thirty he renounced the world and became an ascetic with the same ceremonies that have been described in the case of Mahāvīra. In order to gain Omniscience he practised austerities for eighty-three days, and during this time an enemy, Kamaṭha, caused a heavy downpour of rain to fall on him, so that these austerities might be made as trying to flesh and blood as possible. Now this enemy was no one else than the Brāhman ascetic whose carelessness in a previous incarnation had so nearly caused the death of the poor snake. But if Pārśvanātha's enemies were active, his grateful friends were no less mindful of him, and the snake, who by now had become the god Dharaṇendra, held a serpent's hood over the ascetic, and sheltered him as with an umbrella; and to this day the saint's symbol is a hooded serpent's head. On the eighty-fourth day Pārśvanātha obtained Kevala jñāna seated under a Dhātaki tree near Benares.

He now became the head of an enormous community, his mother and wife being his first disciples. Followed by these, he preached his doctrines for seventy years, until at last his karma was exhausted, and, an old man of a hundred years, he reached deliverance at last on Mount Sameta Śikhara in Bengal, which was thenceforth known as the Mount of Pārśvanātha.

The four vows of Pārśvanātha.Pārśvanātha made four vows binding on the members of his community: not to take life, not to lie, not to steal and not to own property. He doubtless felt that the chastity and celibacy was included under the last two heads, but in the two hundred and fifty years that elapsed between his death and the coming of Mahāvīra, abuses became so rife that the latter was forced to add another vow— that of chastity—to those already enumerated. This he did by dividing the vow of property specifically into two, one part relating to women and the other to material possessions. Some Jaina, however, believe that Pārśvanātha's four vows were those of non-killing, non-lying, non-stealing and chastity, that it was the promise to keep nothing as one's own possession that Mahāvīra added to these, and that it was in order to keep this vow that Mahāvīra himself went about naked.

Another reform which they say Mahāvīra introduced was the making confession compulsory instead of optional for monks. All these traditions bear out the idea that Mahāvīra was a reformer rather than a founder of his faith and order, and that the rule of Pārśvanātha had not been found in practice sufhciently stringent.

The Twenty-two Earlier Tīrthaṅkara.

Jainism the oldest religion.We have begun our survey of Jaina legend with the birth of Mahāvīra, but no Jaina historian would do that. The Jaina firmly believe that theirs is the oldest religion in India, and delight to quote many passages^[1] from the Veda which prove to them that Jainism existed before the Veda were written and cannot therefore be an offshoot of Brāhmanism, as most scholars believe. They reject the old theory^[2] that Gautama Indrabhūti revolted from Jainism and became the founder of Buddhism, and claim Buddhism as a late offshoot of Jainism, telling the following legend to prove it. During the interval between the days of Pārśvanātha and those of Mahāvīra there lived a certain Jaina monk called Buddha Kīrti, who was well learned in the scriptures. One day he was performing austerities by the side of the river Sarayū in Pālāśa Nagara, and as he sat there he saw a dead fish floating by him. As he watched it, he reflected that there could be no harm in eating the flesh of dead fish, for there was no soul within it. This thought inspired him, the Jaina say, to found a new religion; he left his austerities, assumed red garments, and preached Buddhism.

According to the Jaina, the best way to begin the study of their history is through the stories of the Tīrthaṅkara. We have studied the lives of the two latest Tīrthaṅkara, Pārśvanātha, the twenty-third, and Mahāvīra, the twenty-fourth; but the Jaina have legends regarding each one of their predecessors.

1. Ṛiṣa-
bhadeva
or Ādi-
nātha.The first Tīrthaṅkara was born when the world had passed out of its happiest stage and was in the era of Suṣama Duṣama.^[3] A Rajput king had a little son born to him, whom his mother called Ṛiṣabhadeva, because in her dream she had seen a bull (ṛiṣabha)) coming towards her. Ṛiṣabhadeva (also called Ādinātha) taught men seventy-two arts and women sixty-four, for these have only to be skilled in domestic and not in literary and industrial crafts; but his great glory lies in the fact that he first taught men the Jaina faith. He lived for eighty-four lakhs of pūrva of time, of which he spent only one lakh of pūrva as an ascetic. Ṛiṣabhadeva had one hundred sons (amongst whom was the famous king Bharata); their height was five hundred bow-shots. This first Tīrthaṅkara attained mokṣa from Aṣṭāpada (or Kailāsa) in the modern Himalayas.

2. Ajita-
nātha.The world grew steadily worse, and in fifty lakhs of crores of sāgara of time the next Tīrthaṅkara, Ajitanātha, was born in Ayodhyā. After his birth all his father's enemies were conquered (jita), hence his name, 'the invincible one'. He was born in the period called Duṣama Suṣama, and all the remaining Tīrthaṅkara were born in the same period. His sign, which one sees on all his images in the temples, is an elephant. During his life he himself earned the title of Victorious, for he was so devout an ascetic that he was beaten by none in performing austerities. He attained mokṣa together with a thousand other Sādhus.

3. Sam-
bhava-
nātha.After thirty more lakhs of crores of sāgara Sambhavanātha, the third Tīrthaṅkara, was born in Śrāvastī of Rajput parents. The king his father had been distressed to see the way his dominions were ravaged by plague and famine, but when he heard the good news of the boy's birth, he felt there was a chance (sambhava) of better times coming, hence the boy's name. He too was able to persuade a thousand ascetics to join his community or saṇgha, who eventually all attained mokṣa with him. His emblem is the horse.

4. Abhinandana.The fourth Tīrthaṅkara owes his name to the fact that the god Indra used to come down and worship (abhinanda) him in Vanitā, where his parents, Saṁvara and Siddārtha Rāṇī, ruled. He attained mokṣa accompanied by a thousand monks, as indeed did all the first eleven Tīrthaṅkara except Supārśvanātha. Abhinandana has the ape for his sign; he was born ten lakhs of crores of sāgara of time after his predecessor. His height was three hundred and fifty bow-shots.

5. Sumatinātha.The legend about the fifth Tīrthaṅkara, Sumatinātha, is more interesting; he was born in Kaṅkaṇapura, where his father, a Rajput named Megharatha, was king; his mother's name was Sumaṅgaḷā. The child was called Sumatinātha, because even before his birth his mother's intellect (sumati) was so sharpened. To prove the queen's ability, a story is told resembling that of the judgement of Solomon. An old Brāhman died, leaving two wives; both women claimed the only son as theirs, and the dispute was taken to the queen to settle, who decreed, as Solomon did (and with similar results), that the living child should be cut in two. This Tīrthaṅkara's sign is sometimes given as a red goose, but others say it is a red partridge. He was born nine lakhs of crores of sāgara after Abhinandana, and his height was three hundred bow-shots.

6. Padmaprabhu.Susīmā, the mother of the sixth Tīrthaṅkara, longed before his birth to sleep on a bed of red lotuses (padma), with the result that her son was always the colour of a red lotus, which flower he took for his emblem. His father, Dhara, was the Rajput king of Kauśāmbī. Padmaprabhu was born ninety thousand crores of sāgara of time after his predecessor; his height was two hundred and fifty bow-shots.

7. Supārśvanātha.The father of the next Tīrthaṅkara was the Rajput king of Benares; but his wife suffered from leprosy in both her sides. This dreadful disease was cured before the child’s birth, so he was given the name of Su (good) pārśva (side). His emblem is the Svastika symbol 卐. Unlike the other earlier Tīrthaṅkara he attained mokṣa with only five hundred companions. Nine thousand crores of sāgara of time had elapsed since the death of his predecessor, and his height was two hundred bow-shots.

8. Ċandraprabhu.After a further interval of nine hundred crores of sāgara of time the eighth Tīrthaṅkara was born; his height was one hundred and fifty bow-shots. Before his birth his mother (the wife of the Rajput king of Ċandrapurī) longed to drink the moon (ċandra). To assuage her craving, a plate of water was one night handed to her in such a way that the moon was reflected in it; when the child was born, he was found to be as bright and white as the moon, which accordingly became his emblem, and he was called Ċandraprabhu.

9. Suvidhinātha.Two names are given to the next Tīrthaṅkara. Owing to the peace he brought to a distracted family, all of whose kingly relatives were warring against one another, he is called Suvidhinātha, for on his birth they gave up fighting and took instead to performing their religious duties (suvidhi); but as his teeth were so beautiful that they resembled the buds of an exquisite flower (puṣpa), he was also called Puṣpadanta. There is a dispute over his emblem: the Śvetāmbara say it is the crocodile, while certain Digambara declare it is the crab. Ninety crores of sāgara elapsed before his birth, and his height was one hundred bow-shots.

10. ŚītaḷanāthaThe tenth Tīrthaṅkara had a marvellous power of parting coolness (śītaḷatā) to fevered patients. Before his birth his mother laid her hand on her husband, the Rajput king of Bhaddilapura, and immediately the fever which had defied all the efforts of his physicians left him, and all his life long the saint had a similar power, hence his name, Śītaḷanātha, Lord of Coolness. His sign is the Śrīvatsa svastika , or according to the Digambar, the Ficus religiosa. His height was ninety bow-shots, and the interval of time between him and his predecessor was nine crores of sāgara.

11. Śreyāṁsanātha. King Viṣṇudeva, who ruled in Siṁhapurī, possessed a most beautiful throne, but unfortunately an evil spirit took up his abode in it, so that no one dare sit there. His wife, however, so longed to sit on it that she determined to do so at any risk; to every one’s astonishment she was quite uninjured, so, when her son was born, he was named Śreyāṁsanātha, the Lord of Good, for already he had enabled his mother to cast out an evil spirit and so do a world of good (śreyāṁsa). His sign is the rhinoceros; one crore of sāgara of time had intervened before his birth; and his height was eighty bow-shots.

12. Vāsupūjya.Before the birth of the twelfth Tīrthaṅkara the gods Indra and Vasu used to go and worship the father of the future saint, and as the father’s name was Vasupūja and the god Indra used to give him jewels called vasu, the child was naturally enough called Vāsupūjya. His sign is the male buffalo, and he passed to mokṣa from his birthplace, Ċampāpurī, accompanied by six hundred Sādhus. Fifty-four sāgara of time had intervened, and his height was seventy arrow-shots.

13. VimaḷanāthaThe sign of the thirteenth Tīrthaṅkara is the boar. He got his name Vimaḷanātha, Lord of Clearness, through the clearness (vimaḷatā) of intellect with which he endowed his mother before his birth, and which she displayed in the following manner. A certain man and his wife unwisely stayed in a temple inhabited by a female demon, who, falling in love with the husband, assumed his real wife’s form. The miserable man was quite unable to tell which was his true wife, and asked the king of Kampilapura to distinguish between them. It was the queen, however, who solved the difficulty. She knew the long reach that witches and only witches have, and telling the husband to stand a long distance off, challenged the two wives to prove their chastity by touching him. Both tried their utmost, but, of course, the human wife could not reach so far, whereas the demon wife did and thus showed her real character. Vimaḷanātha had six hundred companions to mokṣa. Thirty sāgara of time had passed before his birth, and his height was sixty bow-shots.

14. Anantanātha.There was an endless (ananta) thread which lay about quite powerless in Ayodhyā; but after the king’s wife had given birth to the fourteenth Tīrthaṅkara, it became endued with power to heal diseases; this event, combined with the fact that his mother had seen an endless necklace of pearls, decided the child’s name. Anantanātha’s birth was divided from his predecessor’s death by nine sāgara of time, and his height was fifty bow-shots. His sign is the hawk, or, according to the Digambara, the bear.

15. Dharmanātha.The fifteenth Tīrthaṅkara was born four sāgara of time after Anantanātha’s Nirvāṇa, and his height was only forty-five bow-shots. His parents were the Rajput king and queen of Ratnapurī, and before his birth they exhibited such new zeal in the performance of their religious duties (dharma), that the child was given the name of Lord of Religion, Dharmanātha. He attained mokṣa with eight hundred monks. His sign is a thunderbolt.

16. Śāntinātha.After the nirvana of the ninth Tīrthaṅkara, Suvidhinātha, the Jaina faith disappeared until the birth of the tenth Tīrthaṅkara, who revived it; on his nirvana it disappeared again, but was revived on the birth of the eleventh; and this continued to be the case until the birth of Śāntinātha, the sixteenth Tīrthaṅkara, after which it never disappeared again. The parents of this Tīrthaṅkara ruled in Hastināpura three sāgara of time after Dharmanātha’s nirvāṇa. It happened that plague was raging. Before Śāntinātha’s birth, however, his mother was able to stay the course of the pestilence by sprinkling the sufferers with water; so when the child was born he was called Śāntinātha, or Lord of Peace (śānti). The special interest of this saint lies in the fact that he was the first Tīrthaṅkara to become a ċakravartī,^[4] or emperor of the whole of Bhārata (i. e. India). Śāntinātha’s height was forty bow-shots, and his emblem is the deer. He attained mokṣa from Mt. Pārśvanātha in Bengal in company with nine hundred Sādhus. With the exception of four,^[5] all the Tīrthaṅkara passed to nirvāṇa from this hill.

17. Kunthunātha.After half a palya of time the seventeenth Tīrthaṅkara was born in Gajapurī, where his parents, King Śivarāja and Queen Śrīdevī, reigned. Before his birth his mother saw a heap (kuntha) of jewels; during his life people began to show greater kindness to insects (kunthu), and the power of his father’s enemies was stunted (kuntha). Kunthunātha’s sign was the goat, and he was thirty-five bow-shots in height. He, like his predecessor, became an emperor, and obtained mokṣa from Pārśvanātha, but accompanied by a thousand companions.

18. Aranātha.Queen Devī, wife of King Sudarsana of Hastināpura, saw a vision of a bank of jewels before the birth of her son, the eighteenth Tīrthaṅkara, who was born a quarter palya of time after Kunthunātha. Aranātha was thirty bow-shots in height, his emblem is the third kind of svastika (the Nandāvartta), he was also an emperor, and he passed to mokṣa from Sameta Śikhara (Mt. Pārśvanātha) with a thousand monks.

19. Mallinātha.The nineteenth Tīrthaṅkara is the most interesting of all, for owing to deceitfulness in a previous life this saint was born as a woman;^[6] having, however, done all the twenty things that make an ascetic a Tīrthaṅkara, nothing could prevent his becoming one, but his previous deceitfulness resulted in his becoming a female Tīrthaṅkara. She was born in Mithilā, where her parents, King Kumbera and Queen Prabhāvatī, ruled. Before her birth her mother longed to wear a garland (malli) woven of the flowers of all seasons, and the gods and goddesses themselves brought the flowers to gratify her desire. Mallinātha’s symbol is a water-jar, and she also passed to mokṣa from Sameta Śikhara. Her height was twenty-five bow-shots. The Digambara, who deny that any woman can pass to mokṣa without rebirth as a man, deny of course that Mallinātha could have been a woman. Another point of interest is that the time between the Tīrthaṅkara can now be measured by years, and this nineteenth Tīrthaṅkara was born a thousand crores of years after the eighteenth.

20. Munisuvrata.Before the birth of Munisuvrata, his mother, the wife of King Sumitra of Rājagṛiha, kept all the beautiful vows of Jainism (su vrata, good vows) as devoutly as if she had been an ordinary woman and not a queen; hence the child’s name. His height was twenty bow-shots; he was born fifty-four lakhs of years after the last Tīrthaṅkara. His parents, while Kṣatriya or Rajputs, belonged to the Hari dynasty, whereas all the other Tīrthaṅkara, save the twenty-second, belonged to the Ikṣvāku family. His symbol is the tortoise.

21. Naminātha.The twenty-first Tīrthaṅkara was born in Mathurā after an interval of only six lakhs of years. His father. King Vijya, was engaged in an apparently hopeless warfare with his enemies, but the astrologers declared that if his wife, Queen Viprā, showed her face on the city wall (this was before the time of the zenana system) the enemy would bow down (nama) with fear and flee away. This all happened, and the child was named accordingly. Naminātha was fifteen bow-shots in height, his emblem is the blue lotus, and he attained mokṣa from Sameta Śikhara together with a thousand ascetics.

22. Neminātha, or Ariṣṭa Neminātha.The twenty-second Tīrthaṅkara (like the twentieth) is always represented as black; before his birth his mother, the wife of Samudravijaya, king of Saurīpura, saw a wheel (nemi) of black jewels (ariṣṭa). Kṛiṣṇa and his brother Baḷadeva lived at this time, and were cousins of Neminātha’s. This Tīrthaṅkara was ten bow-shots in height, and his sign was the conch shell. Unlike most of the other Tīrthaṅkara, he attained mokṣa from Girnār in Kāṭhiāwāḍ.

The twenty-third and twenty-fourth Tirthankara are respectively Pārśvanātha and Mahāvīra.

The Followers of Mahāvīra.

Mahāvīra’s unruly disciple Gośāla.The peculiar temptations with which an ascetic’s life are beset are illustrated for us in the life of Gośāla, an early antinomian. He seems to have been the head of a body of unclothed anchorites, a section of the Ājīvika monks, and joined forces with Mahāvīra whilst the latter was still practising austerities before the period of his enlightenment. Gośāla, Dr. Hoernle suggests in his exhaustive article on the Ājīvikas,^[7] may either have been moved by a desire to learn the tricks of Mahāvīra’s trade, or else the strong stern personality of the great ascetic may have had an irresistible attraction for the weaker sensual nature. At any rate, for six years they lived together, but a permanent association was impossible between a man like Mahāvīra and one of Gośāla’s tricky, unreliable disposition.

There seems no doubt that they separated owing to some act of unchastity on Gośāla’s part, and this had the natural effect of opening Mahāvīra’s eyes to the special temptation besetting wandering mendicants. An added element of bitterness would be caused by the disciple venturing to preach before the master felt himself qualified to do so, for whilst Mahāvīra waited twelve years before teaching his Way, Gośāla preached after only six.

It was probably owing to Gośāla’s conduct that Mahāvīra added the vow of chastity to the four vows of Pārśvanātha’s order, and all through the Jaina scriptures one seems to find references to this unworthy disciple. ‘A wise man should consider that these (heretics) do not live a life of chastity.’^[8] ‘In the assembly he pronounces holy (words), yet secretly he commits sins; but the wise know him to be a deceiver and great rogue.’^[9] A dialogue is given between a disciple of Mahāvīra’s, called Ārdraka, and Gośāla, in which Gośāla, like many another impenitent, tries to defend himself by finding fault with his old leader, and takes up an antinomian position: ‘according to our Law an ascetic, who lives alone and single, commits no sin if he uses cold water, eats seeds, accepts things prepared for him, and has intercourse with women.’^[10]

The references to Gośāla in the Buddhist books, though slighter, bear out the same idea of his character. Dr. Hoernle mentions Buddha’s well-known abhorrence of Gośāla, and tells how Buddha classified the ascetic systems differing from his own into those whose members lived in incontinency and those which could only be condemned as unsatisfying—placing Gośāla amongst the former.

Gośāla obtained this his best-known name through having been born in a cowshed, but he is also known by another name, that of Maṅkhali Putra, which the Jaina say was given to him because he was the illegitimate son of a monk. If there were this piteous taint in his blood it would account for his strange dual nature, his strivings, and his failure. After he left Mahāvīra, he and his followers seem to have lived in open defiance of all the laws of ascetic life, expressed or implied, and to have made their head-quarters in the premises of a potter woman in the town of Śrāvastī. There after sixteen years Mahāvīra found him and exposed his real character. Gośāla had previously tried to justify himself by adopting not only an antinomian position, but also one of absolute fatalism, in which he declared that all things were absolutely fixed and so man was relieved of all moral responsibility. Now he brought forward another doctrine, that of re-animation, by which he explained to Mahāvīra that the old Gośāla who had been a disciple of his was dead, and that he who now animated the body of Gośāla was quite another person; this theory, however, deceived nobody, and Gośāla, discredited in the eyes of the townspeople, fell lower and lower, and at last died as a fool dieth. Just before the end, however, the strange duality of his nature again asserted itself, and, acknowledging that all that Mahāvīra had said against him was true, and that he had left the true faith and preached a false one, he directed his own disciples to drag his body through the town by a rope for people to spit at, and to bury him with every mark of shame.^[11] This command they naturally did not carry out, nor would it have been necessary for us so long after his death to have discussed this unhappy man, but for the profound effect his life had on the formulation of Mahāvīra’s doctrine.

Gośāla is of importance to those of us who are trying to understand Jainism for two reasons: the sin and shame of his life emphasized the need for stringent rules for the order; and the doctrine of absolute fatalism was shown to result in non-moral conduct. Jainism avoids this determinism, as we shall see later, by teaching that, though karma decides all, we ourselves can affect our past karma by our present life.

Gautama Indrabhūti.The Śvetāmbara tell the following story of the conversion of Mahāvīra’s earliest and greatest disciple, Gautama Indrabhūti. It happened that once when Mahāvīra went to the city of Apāpā to preach, a rich Brāhman was preparing to offer a great animal sacrifice, and had invited Gautama Indrabhūti and his ten brothers to be present. They heard of the new teacher, and that he was denouncing the animal sacrifice at which they had assisted, and they were very much enraged at his audacity. They therefore determined to oppose him and expose the falseness of his teaching, but felt that they must first learn more of this new doctrine. They listened to Mahāvīra’s discourses, and heard the gentle, thoughtful answers he gave to all questioners, till at length, being convinced of the truth of his Way, they cast in their lot with his, and became his chief disciples or Ganadhara.^[12]

The Digambara give a different account of Gautama’s conversion. Indrabhūti was, they say, born of Brāhman parents in a village called Gōvara, his father’s name being Vasumati, and his mother’s Pṛithvī;^[13] he became a very learned pandit and grew extremely vain of his learning. One day, however, an old man appeared and asked him to explain a certain verse to him. Mahāvīra had, the old man said, repeated the śloka to him, but had immediately afterwards become so lost in meditation that he could get no explanation of it from the saint, and yet he felt that he could not live unless he knew the meaning. The verse contained references to Kāḷa^[14] and Dravya, Pañċa Astikāya, Tattva and Leśyā,^[15] not one of which could Gautama understand, but being too true a scholar to pretend to a knowledge which he did not possess, he sought out Mahāvīra to ask for an explanation. The moment he was in the presence of the great ascetic all his pride in his fancied learning fell from him, and he besought Mahāvīra to teach him. He not only became a convert himself, but took over with him his five hundred pupils and his three^[16] brothers.

The Sthānakavāsī tell yet a third story of Gautama’s conversion. Indrabhūti was going to assist at a great sacrifice, but, to his surprise, he saw that all the gods, instead of going to the sacrifice, were going to hear an ascetic preach! Gautama asked who the ascetic was, and, going to meet him, was astonished at being called by his own name. He was still more astonished when Mahāvīra proceeded to answer all the unspoken questions and solve all the doubts that had been in his mind about karma, jīva, mokṣa, &c.

All sects believe that, however converted, Gautama by his intense attachment to his master, was for long prevented from attaining Kevala jñāna or Omniscience.

A sermon by Mahāvīra.The Uttarādhyayana records a sermon entitled The Leaf of the Tree which the Jaina say Mahāvīra preached to Gautama to try and help him to reach Kevala jñāna. It is worth while studying it closely,^[17] for it tells us much of Mahāvīra’s doctrine. Mahāvīra warns Gautama that life will end sometime, even as the withered leaf of a tree must fall to the ground when its days are done; and that its duration is as brief as that of a dew-drop clinging to a blade of grass. Only when the chances of rebirth have resulted in one’s being born as a human being can one get rid of the result (karma) of past action. How rare is the opportunity; for one’s soul might have been imprisoned for aeons in an earth, or a fire, or a wind body; or it might have been clothed with a plant, an insect, or an animal form; one might have been born in heaven or hell as a god or a demon, but only to a human being is the chance of escape open. Even if one happens to be born as a man, one might not be born an Ārya but only an aboriginal or a foreigner (to whom apparently Mahāvīra did not regard the way of escape as open); or if born as an Ārya, one might not be capable or have the opportunity of intelligently hearing and believing the Law; or again, one might not have the strength of will to choose the hard path of asceticism. As Gautama grows old and frail, this priceless opportunity which comes so seldom will gradually pass away from him, so Mahāvīra beseeches him to cast away every sort of attachment that might chain him to rebirth, and, since he has chosen the path of asceticism which leads to deliverance, to press on to the very end. ‘You have crossed the great ocean, why do you halt so near the shore? Make haste to get on the other side and reach that world of perfection [nirvāṇa] where there is safety and perfect happiness.’

In the Uttarādhyayana it is recorded that the effect of this sermon was such as to enable Gautama to cut off love and reach perfection,^[18] but the Kalpa Sūtra supports the current belief that it was not till the night that Mahāvīra died that this the oldest of his disciples ‘cut asunder the tie of friendship which he had for his master, and obtained the highest knowledge and intuition called Kevala’.^[19]

Gautama survived Mahāvīra for twelve years, and finally obtained nirvāṇa at Rājagṛiha at the age of ninety-two, having lived fifty years as a monk.

It will be remembered that ten^[20] of Indrabhūti’s brothers attached themselves to the great ascetic at the same time that he did. They, too, must have been men of strong character, for three^[20] of them became heads of communities.

Sudharma.There was another great disciple of Mahāvīra called Sudharma, who also survived him, and to whom we are indebted for the Jaina scriptures. The Jaina say that Gautama Indrabhūti had become a Kevalī and imparted knowledge which was the result of his own thinking, but Sudharma, not having attained omniscience, could only pass on the teaching of others.^[21] He therefore wrote out what he had heard his master say and compiled twelve Aṅga, eleven Upāṅga, and various other works. All that tradition states about Sudharma could be tersely expressed on a tombstone. He was born in a little village called Kollāga, his father was a Brāhman called Dhamila, and his mother’s name was Bhaddila. He lived for fifty years as a householder before receiving ordination from Mahāvīra, and then followed him for thirty years. After Mahāvīra’s death he became head of the community, and held that position for twelve years, till he too obtained Kevala jñāna, whereupon the headship of the order passed to a disciple of his named Jambū Svāmī. It is said that Sudharma attained mokṣa when a hundred years old.

1. See, for instance, Jain Itihās series, No. 1, a lecture by Lāla Benārsi Dāss, M.A., Agra, 1902.
2. They declare that this mistake was never made by Jaina, only by European scholars.
3. Otherwise: Suṣama Duḥṣamā.
4. There have been twelve of these great rulers, and these with the twenty-four Tīrthaṅkara, nine Baḷadeva, nine Vāsudeva, and nine Prati-vāsudeva make up the sixty-three Great Heroes of the Jaina.
5. Ṛiṣabhadeva, Vāsupūjya, Neminātha and Mahāvīra.
6. See p. 121.
7. E. R, E., vol. i.
8. Sūtra Kṛitāṅga, S. B. E., xiv, p. 245.
9. Ibid., xlv, p. 273.
10. Ibid., xlv, p. 411.
11. Some Jaina believe that, because he so sincerely repented before his death, he went not to hell, but to one of the Devaloka, i.e. heavens, and is now, at the time of writing, in the Twelfth Devaloka, from which he will pass in another age to be a Tīrthaṅkara.
12. At this time Ċandana, daughter of Dadhivāhana, king of Campā, also entered the order and became the head of the nuns.
13. Sanskrit Pṛithivī.
14. Sanskrit Kāla.
15. Often written Leśā.
16. According to other accounts there were only two brothers.
17. This sermon the Jaina regard as containing the essence of their religion.
18. S. B. E., xlv, p. 46.
19. Ibid., xxii, p. 265.
20. The numbers vary in different versions of the story.
21. This must surely be one of the earliest references to the difference between original work and compilation!