# The Heart of Jainism/Chapter 3

We have seen that in the sixth century B.C. the times were ripe for revolt; now, after the event, it is almost easy to prophesy where the revolt was first likely to arise.
Birthplace.The strongest centre of Brāhmanical influence was in the country lying round the modern Delhi—it was the language spoken by the people in this tract of land that was destined to be developed by grammarians into the classical Sanskrit, and it was they who composed much of the old Brāhmanic literature that has come down to us. All this region, Dr. Grierson tells us, was called the 'Midland', but encircling it on east, south, and west was an 'Outland', where the Brāhmanic influence was less strong, and where the thinkers were to be found not in the priestly ranks, but 'among the Kṣatriya class to whose learning and critical acumen witness is borne even in contemporary Brāhmanic writings.' In this Outland near the modern Patna is a town called nowadays Besārh.
Most Indian towns are to-day divided into wards, where the various castes live apart. One must seek the potters in one quarter and the washermen in another, whilst the lowest of all, the despised refuse-removers, live actually outside the city walls.
Some two thousand years ago in Besārh the same divisions existed as would be found to-day; and there, in fact, the priestly (Brāhman), the warrior (Kṣatriya), and the commercial (Baniyā) communities lived so separately that their quarters were sometimes spoken of as though they had been distinct villages, as Vaiśālī, Kuṇḍagrāma, and Vāṇijyagrāma. Strangely enough, it was not in their own but ​in the Kṣatriya ward that the man was born who was to be the great hero of the Baniyā, and who was to found amongst these commercial people a religion which, with all its limitations, yet made one of the most emphatic protests the world has ever known against accounting luxury, wealth, or comfort the main things in life. It seems almost paradoxical also that the warrior caste should produce the great apostle of non-killing. He was afterwards known from his exploits as Mahāvīra—the great hero—but his earliest name he derived from his birthplace, being known simply as Vaiśāliya, ‘the man of Vaiśālī’ (the main ward of the town). The government of such a city or ward seems to have resembled that of a Greek state. ‘It was’, says Dr. Hoernle, ‘an oligarchic republic; its government was vested in a Senate, composed of the heads of the resident Kṣatriya clans, and presided over by an officer who had the title of king and was assisted by a Viceroy and a Commander-in-Chief.’ The chief of one of these Kṣatriya clans, the Nāta or Nāya clan, was a man called Siddhārtha, who doubtless attained some eminence in Senate and State, for he eventually married the daughter of this republican king, a Kṣatriya lady named Triśalā.
The fourteen dreams.This old-world princess longed, as every Indian woman does to-day, to bear her lord a son, and suddenly one night, the legend tells, wonderful dreams came to her as she slept, revealing to her not only that she should bear a son, but also that this son should win everlasting rest and renown.
These dreams of Triśalā’s are to-day often graven round the silver treasuries in Jaina temples, and Jaina women love to recall them, for it is given to all the mothers of the great Jaina saints to see them.
iFirst the happy princess dreamed of a mighty elephant ​whose colour was whiter than a cloud, a heap of pearls, the spray of water, or moonbeams, and the sound of whose voice was like thunder.
iiThen she saw a white bull, whiter than the petals of the lotus, which diffused a glory of light on all around, and this—so one sect of the Jaina, the Digambara, say—foretold the birth of a great religious teacher who should spread the light of knowledge. Another sect, however, the Sthānakavāsī, hold that it showed that he should have strength to bear the yoke of religion, for the yoke that a Jaina ascetic must bear is not light, and no weakling can endure it.
iiiThe next dream prophesied that she should bear one who should overcome all his enemies (i.e. his karma, the results of his actions): for she saw a magnificent white lion leap from the sky towards her face; his eyes were like pure lightning, and his tongue came out of his mouth ‘like a shoot of beauty’. This further foretold that Mahāvīra should be ‘the lion of houseless monks’, and so he has the lion as his symbol.
ivThe fourth dream was of the beautiful goddess Śrī or Lakṣmī (the goddess of wealth), whom Triśalā saw floating on the petals of a lotus in the lotus lake on Mount Himavata, with guardian elephants ‘anointing’ her with water, and this she knew meant that her son should be an ‘anointed’ king.
vNext, a garland of sweet-smelling Mandāra flowers foretold how fragrant the body of the little child should be.
viThe white moon dispelling the darkness of the wildest wilderness again prophesied a religious preacher.
viiThe radiant sun, red as the beak of a parrot, which ​throttles the cold and ‘disperses the evil-doers who stroll about at night, whose thousand rays obscure the lustre of other lights’, showed that the child should dispel the darkness of ignorance.
viiiThe sects do not agree as to what the eighth dream of the princess was about. The Śvetāmbara believe she saw a beautiful banner (an Indra Dhvaja) embroidered with those signs which Hindus and Jaina alike consider specially auspicious, and to whose golden pole was tied a plume of peacock’s feathers; while the Digambara affirm that she saw two fishes, which showed the child was to be happy.
ixThe ninth dream, the Śvetāmbara say, was a golden pitcher of exquisite beauty, filled with water—or, according to others, with jewels—which was the abode of happy fortune and was wreathed at all seasons with fragrant flowers, portending happiness. The Digambara assert that she saw two golden pitchers filled with pure water, to show that the child should be constantly immersed in spiritual meditation.
xThe next vision was that of a lotus lake whose flowers ‘were licked by bees and mad drones’, from which Triśalā knew that her baby would possess all the marks of a perfect being; or, as the Sthānakavāsī say, that the honey of his sermons would be eagerly absorbed by the whole world.
xiThe princess then saw the milk ocean, white as the breast of Lakṣmī, tossing its transparent breakers as the wind played over it and the great rivers rushed into it, and this foretold that the child should attain to the perfect knowledge of the Kevalī.
xi aAt this point the Digambara, who believe the princess saw not fourteen but sixteen dreams, insert a vision of a throne of diamonds and rubies, which foretold that the coming child should rule over the three worlds.
​xiiHer next dream was of a jewel-bedecked celestial abode which shone like the morning sun and which was hung with garlands and pictures of birds and beasts. There the celestial choirs gave concerts, and the place resounded with the din of the drums of the gods which imitated the sound of rain clouds.
xii aHere again the Digambara insert a vision of a great king of the gods dwelling below the earth. This the Śvetāmbara do not accept, xiiibut both agree about the next dream, in which Triśalā saw a great vase piled up with jewels. The base of the vase was on the level of the earth, and its height was as the height of Mount Meru, and its brightness illuminated even the sky; it foretold the birth of a child that should possess right knowledge, right intuition, and right conduct.
xivHer last dream was of a clear fire fed with clarified butter, whose beautiful flames seemed almost to scorch the firmament, which prophesied that the white-souled child she was to bear should illumine the universe by his wisdom.
All these dreams Triśalā related to Siddhārtha, and the next day the interpreters that he summoned foretold from them the birth of a spiritual conqueror (Jina), lord of the three worlds and the universal emperor of the law.
Some of the more advanced Jaina do not believe that Triśalā actually saw all these dreams, but they hold that before the child’s birth both father and mother knew that he would be either a Ċakravartī (universal monarch) or a Tīrthaṅkara. Perhaps the legend of the dreams may carry with it this meaning, that at that time there was a universal stirring of desire, and that many were hoping some reformer or religious leader might be born. At any ​rate they must have conveyed the welcome assurance that the child at least would safely survive all the dangers that an Indian birth-chamber holds for both mother and babe.
There is another legend about Mahāvīra’s birth which is also recorded in the Jaina sacred books, and which possesses some value as showing the intense hatred existing between the Brāhmans and the Kṣatriyas. According to this legend, a Brāhman lady, Devānandā, wife of the Brāhman Ṛiṣabhadatta, living in the Brāhmanical part of the town, saw the Fourteen Auspicious Dreams which foretold the birth of a great saint or Tīrthaṅkara. But Indra, the chief of the gods, saw from his celestial throne what had happened, and knew that the child would be the great Tīrthaṅkara Mahāvīra; so he sent his commander-in-chief in the form of a deer to remove the embryo from Devānandā and to give it to Triśalā, in order that Mahāvīra might not be born in a ‘beggarly or Brāhmanical family’. However that may be, the stories go on to show how carefully Triśalā, two thousand years ago, prepared for the joy of motherhood just as a modern woman would, by avoiding all sickness and fatigue and walking in quiet country places, so that she might gain health for body and mind. At last, in the year 599 b.c. of our era, or towards the end of the Duṣama Suṣama period, as the Jaina reckon time, on the thirteenth day of the bright half of the moon in the month Ċaitra, the time came when Triśalā, herself perfectly healthy, gave birth to a perfectly healthy child.
Birth.The thought of India centres largely round marriage and motherhood, and the birth of a manchild then, as now, ​was the occasion of a very delirium of rejoicing. To-day, in a native state, the birth of an heir is celebrated in very much the same way as it was in Mahāvīra’s time. The town is en fête, prisoners are released, fines are cancelled, presents are given, and presents (alas!) are exacted.
When the child was three days old, it was shown the sun and the moon (this is not usual now); on the sixth day they observed the religious vigil (modern Jaina still worship ‘Mother Sixth’), Triśalā bathed on the tenth day, and on the twelfth, after the usual family feast, the boy was named with all pomp and circumstance. In India it is the father’s sister who usually names a child, but his parents themselves chose Mahāvīra’s name, announcing that ‘since the prince was placed in the womb of the Kṣatriyāṇī Triśalā this family’s (treasure) of gold, silver, riches, corn, jewels, pearls, shells, precious stones and corals increased; therefore the prince shall be called Vardhamāna (i.e. the Increasing)’. Mahāvīra was sometimes, as we have seen, called Vaiśāliya from his birthplace; his followers, however, seldom call him by this or by the name his parents gave him, but prefer to use the title they say the gods gave him, that of Mahāvīra, the great hero, or else Jina, the conqueror, though this last is really more used in connexion with the religion (Jainism) he promulgated than with himself. He is also known as Jñātaputra, Nāmaputra, Śāsananāyaka, and Buddha.
It was partly the multitude of his names, partly also the number of legends that loving child-like folk had woven round the cradle of their hero, that long obscured the fact that Mahāvīra was an historical personage. Another reason for doubting his existence lay in the superficial resemblance there is between his life and teaching and that of his contemporary, Buddha. It was assumed that one of the two systems must have sprung from the other, ​and it is only through the labours of European scholars like Jacobi, Hoernle, and Bühler that Mahāvīra’s historical existence has been proved. It seems strange that Jaina should still be dependent on the labours of scholars of another faith and speech for all they know about their greatest hero!
We have noticed some of the legends that have gathered round Mahāvīra, and it is worth while examining more, since legends help us in a special way to grasp the latent ideals of a faith. We can learn from them what its followers admire and what they despise, and also what qualities they revere sufficiently to link with their leader’s name. If we contrast the stories told of Mahāvīra with those told, for instance, of Kṛiṣṇa by Hindus, we shall see at once that the thoughts of these early followers of Jainism moved on a higher, cleaner plane, and this purity of thought is one of the glories of Jainism to-day.
Childhood.Austere though the creed of the Jaina is, there are some amongst them whose habit of mind leads them to interpret even these severe tenets as sternly as possible. This diversity of temperament (which is surely inherent in the human race) manifests itself in the stories told of Mahāvīra’s life. The Digambara (who are the straitest sect among the Jaina) always represent their hero as choosing the sterner and less pleasing path: avoiding marriage and going on his way unhindered by any fear of hurting his parents’ feelings. The Śvetāmbara sect, on the other hand, believe that, though from his earliest hours Mahāvīra longed to forsake the world and betake himself to a houseless, wandering life, he nevertheless felt he could not do this during his parents’ lifetime, lest he should cause them pain. Even before his birth, the legend runs, he decided thus: ‘It will not behove me, during the life of my parents, to tear out my hair, and leaving the house to enter the state of houselessness.’ So he ​lived the ordinary life of a happy boy, watched over by the innumerable servants that seem inseparable from Indian life, but enjoying to the full ‘the noble fivefold joys and pleasures of sound, touch, taste, colour and smell’.
Both sects delight to tell of his boyish prowess and of how easily he excelled all his companions in strength and physical endurance, as he did in beauty of mind and body. One day, they say, the sons of his father’s ministers had come as usual to play with him in the royal gardens, when suddenly a mad elephant charged down on the group of children, who fled hither and thither in their efforts to escape. Mahāvīra, however, quietly went up to the infuriated animal, caught it by its trunk, and climbing up on it, escaped being trodden by its feet by riding on its back!
Another legend tells how, when he was playing with the same children at āmbalī pīpaḷī (a sort of ‘tick’ or ‘tig’) among the trees, a god appeared and thought to frighten the child by carrying him high up into the sky on his shoulders. Mahāvīra, however, was not in the least alarmed, and, seizing the opportunity to show his superiority over immortals, whacked the god and pulled his hair so hard, that he was only too ready to descend and get rid of his obstreperous burden. The child who had thus defeated one of their number was called Mahāvīra by the other gods—a name mortals were quick to adopt.
According to the Śvetāmbara tradition Mahāvīra married a lady called Yaśodā (belonging to the Kauṇḍinya gotra), and a daughter was born to them named Anujā (Anojjā) or Priyadarśanā. This daughter eventually married a nobleman called Jamāli, who, after becoming one of Mahāvīra’s followers and fellow workers, ended by opposing him. Their child (Mahāvīra’s granddaughter) had two names, being known both as Śeśavatī and Yaśovatī.
​It was pointed out in the introduction how profoundly some Indians believe that the result of action (karma) ties men to the cycle of rebirth, and that if, through the cessation of life, action and its resultant karma could be ended, so much the less would be the danger of rebirth. This tenet naturally encouraged belief in suicide as a form of prudential insurance! Amongst the recorded deaths by suicide are those of Mahāvīra’s parents, who, according to the Śvetāmbara belief, died of voluntary starvation: ‘on a bed of kuśa grass they rejected all food, and their bodies dried up by the last mortification of the flesh which is to end in death.’ At their death Mahāvīra, who was by now approaching his thirtieth year, felt free to become an ascetic, and asked his elder brother’s permission to renounce the world; the brother consented, only stipulating that Mahāvīra should do nothing in the matter for a year, lest people should think they had quarrelled.
The Digambara accounts differ widely from this. According to them, even when only a child of eight, Mahāvīra took the twelve vows which a Jaina layman may take, and that he always longed to renounce the world; other Digambara say that it was in his thirtieth year that, whilst meditating on his ‘self’, he determined to become a monk, realizing that he would only spend seventy-two years in this incarnation as Mahāvīra. At first his parents were opposed to the idea of their delicately nurtured child undergoing all the hardships that fall to the lot of a houseless mendicant, but at last they consented, and it was during their lifetime that Mahāvīra entered on the spiritual vocation, which in India, as in Europe, has so often proved a suitable career for younger sons.
Modern research would seem to favour the Śvetāmbara belief that Mahāvīra had married, but this the Digambara strenuously deny, for an ascetic who has never married ​moves on a higher plane of sanctity than one who has known the joys of wedded life.
Jainism, though it denies the existence of a creator and of the three great gods of the Indian Trimūrti, Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Śiva, has never shaken itself free from the belief in many of the minor gods of the Hindu pantheon. It gives these gods, it is true, a very secondary position as servants or tempters of the great Jaina saints, but their existence is accepted as undoubted; accordingly, in the account of Mahāvīra's initiation we shall find many of the old Hindu gods represented as being present.
This initiation, all sects agree, took place when Mahāvīra was about thirty years of age, some time therefore between 570 and 569 b.c. The Nāya clan to which he belonged seem to have supported a body of monks who followed the rule of Pārśvanātha, an ascetic who had lived some two hundred and fifty years before Mahāvīra. It was naturally to this order, probably considered rather irregular by the Brāhmans, that the thoughts of Mahāvīra turned. Its monks had their cells in a park outside the Kṣatriya suburb (Kuṇḍagrāma) of Vaiśālī, and in the centre of this park grew one of those evergreen Aśoka or 'sorrowless' trees, whose leaves are supposed never to know either grief or pain. The Aśoka tree is always associated with Mahāvīra, for the legends say that in his later life an Aśoka tree grew wherever he preached, and it was now under its shade that he made the great renunciation and entered upon that ascetic life, whose austerities were to dry up all the founts of karma and free him from the sorrowful cycle of rebirth.
Mahāvīra had fasted for two-and-a-half days, not even allowing water to cross his lips, and had then given away ​all his property, which can only have been the ordinary possessions of the cadet of a small House, but which the love of his followers has exaggerated into the wealth of a mighty emperor. Then, followed by a train of gods and men, he was carried in a palanquin to the park and, alighting, took his seat on a five-tiered throne, which was so placed as to face the east. There he stripped himself of all his ornaments and finery, flinging them to the attendant god Vaiśramaṇa, who caught them up as they fell.
Most Hindu mendicants cut or shave off their hair, but a peculiar and most painful custom of the Jaina is that all ascetics, as a proof of their power of endurance, must tear out their hair by the roots. One Jaina writer declares in his English ‘Life of Mahāvīra’ that ‘only those can do it who have no love with their flesh and bones’. It is looked on as a sign that henceforth the monk or nun will take no thought for the body.
As Mahāvīra performed this crowning act of austerity, Indra, the leader and king of the gods, falling down before the feet of the venerable ascetic, caught up the hairs in a diamond cup and took them to the Ocean of Milk. The saint then did obeisance to all liberated spirits, and vowing to do no sinful act, adopted the holy conduct.
The Jaina mark with great precision the five degrees of knowledge that lead to Omniscience. Mahāvīra, they say, was born with the first three, Mati jñāna, Śruta jñāna, ​and Avadhi jñāna. He now gained the fourth kind of knowledge, Manaḥparyāya jñāna, by which he knew the thoughts of all sentient beings of five senses in the two-and-a-half continents, and it only remained for him to obtain the fifth degree of knowledge, that of Kevala jñāna or Omniscience, which is possessed by the Kevalī alone.
The Digambara, however, do not believe that Mahāvīra obtained the fourth kind of knowledge till some time after his initiation. According to them, he failed to gain it, though he performed meditation for six months, sitting absolutely motionless. At the end of the six months he went to Kulapura; the king of Kulapura, Kulādhipa, came and did him honour, washed his feet with his own hands and, having walked round him three times, offered him rice and milk; these Mahāvīra accepted and took them as his first meal (pāraṇuṁ) after a fast of six months. He returned to the forest and wandered about in it performing twelve kinds of penance, but still the knowledge was withheld from him. At last he visited Ujjayinī (Ujjain) and did penance in a cemetery there, when Rudra and his wife in vain tried to interrupt him; it was only after overcoming this temptation and again entering on his forest life of meditation that, according to the Digambara belief, he obtained Manaḥparyāya jñāna. Henceforth Mahāvīra was houseless, and wandered through the land so lost in meditation as to be indifferent to sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, subsisting only on the alms of the charitable.
Research seems to have established the fact that at first he belonged to the order of Pārśvanātha mentioned above, a body of mendicants leading a more or less regular life, and that in accordance with their custom he wore clothes; but many Jaina will not acknowledge that a Tīrthaṅkara could have belonged to an order even for ever so short a time; they agree, however, that for thirteen months he did wear one cloth.
​The legend runs that the god Indra himself gave Mahāvīra the beautiful robe which he wore at his initiation. Before the ceremony the saint had given away all his goods in charity, but a certain Brāhman named Somadatta, being absent at that time, had received nothing. He came and complained, and Mahāvīra was greatly troubled to think that he had nothing left to give him, till he remembered Indra’s robe; taking this off, he cut it in two and gave half to the greedy Brāhman. Somadatta was delighted, and showed it off with great pride to a friend of his who was a weaver. The weaver told Somadatta to go back and get the other half and then he would have a robe worth having, which could all be woven into one. The Brāhman was ashamed to actually go and ask for the remaining part, but knowing how completely unconscious of everything that went on around him Mahāvīra was, he walked softly behind the ascetic, and when the robe slipped off (as is the nature of half robes) he stooped, and gently lifting it off the thorns on to which it had fallen, quietly made off with his booty. When Mahāvīra discovered the theft, all he did was to make a parable about it, in which he taught how thorny would be the road of his true disciples in this world, but how priceless would be their value when delivered at last from the thorns that beset them.
Not only was the great ascetic unconscious of the whereabouts of his earthly possessions, he was also absolutely indifferent to pain; for instance, one day he was sitting in meditation outside a village, when some herdsmen, in rough sport, lit a fire between his feet and drove nails into his ears, without the saint being in the least aware of what they were doing.
In India it would be specially easy for abuses to spring up among a body of mendicants; they could gain their food so easily, that a great part of ‘the long Indian day’ would hang idle on their hands, and our proverb about Satan finding work for idle hands to do has its Gujarātī ​counterpart: ‘A man sitting idle brings ruin to pass.’ Many men doubtless had become monks through a constitutional aversion from honest labour, and the climate and leisure, whilst increasing this distaste for work in them, would be apt to create it even in those who had entered the order from the highest motives. Altogether the world-old employer of the unemployed could find fair scope for his mischievous energies amongst them! And so before long Māhavīra found the discipline of Pārśvanātha’s monks too lax, and after a year he left them, to wander alone in a state of absolute nudity.
The question of clothes was a crucial one amongst the Jaina. Māhavīra apparently felt that the complete ascetic must have completely conquered all his emotions, shame amongst others. A true monk would not feel either heat or cold, and so would not need the protection from the weather offered by clothes, and he would be so indifferent to mere appearance as to be unconscious as to whether he wore raiment or not. Being rid of clothes, one is also rid of a lot of other worries too: one needs no box to keep them in, no materials to mend them with, no change of raiment when the first set is dirty or outworn, and, still more important to a Jaina, no water is needed in which to wash them.
On this point Mr. Benārsi Dāss makes some rather interesting remarks in his lecture on Jainism, and throws an astonishingly new light on an old story.
   ‘Jaina monks’, he says, ‘are naked because Jainism says that as long as one entertains the same idea of nakedness as we do, he cannot obtain salvation. One cannot, according to Jain principles, obtain Mokṣa, as long as he remembers that he is naked. He can only cross over the ocean of the world after he has forgotten that he is naked. . . . As long as a man thinks and knows that he is naked, that there is something like good and evil, he cannot obtain Mokṣa. He must forget it to obtain Nirvāṇa. This is very well illustrated by the well--
   known story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven. Adam and Eve were naked and pure. They enjoyed perfect happiness in the garden of Eden. They had no knowledge of good and evil. The devil, their enemy, desired to deprive them of their happiness. He made them eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They at once saw their nakedness. They fell. They were expelled from heaven. It is this knowledge of good and evil, it is this knowledge of nakedness, that deprived them of Eden. The Jains hold the same belief. Our knowledge of good and evil, our knowledge of nakedness, keeps us away from salvation. To obtain it we must forget nakedness. The Jaina Nirgranthas have forgot all knowledge of good and evil. Why should they require clothes to hide their nakedness?’
Sir Monier Williams suggests that the Jaina ‘felt that a sense of shame implied sin, so that if there were no sin in the world there would be no shame. Hence they argued rather illogically that to get rid of clothes was to get rid of sin, and every ascetic who aimed at sinlessness was enjoined to walk about naked with the air or sky (dig) as his sole covering.’
The Digambara believe that Mahāvīra abandoned clothes at the time of his initiation; the Śvetāmbara, as we have seen, that he abandoned them after thirteen months.
It was whilst Mahāvīra was walking naked and homeless and, as the Digambara believe, keeping absolutely unbroken his vow of silence, that he was joined by Gośāla, a disciple whose story we shall have to study more in detail later. For the present we need only note that Gośāla followed Mahāvīra for six years, but subsequently left him and fell into those grievous sins which so easily beset a mendicant, and to guard against which so many precepts in the Jaina scriptures are directed.
For twelve years Mahāvīra wandered from place to place, never staying for longer than a single night in a village or for more than five nights in a town. The object of this custom may have been to avoid levying too great ​a tax on the hospitality of the people, and also to prevent the ascetic forming close or undesirable friendships, which might tempt him to break either his vow of non-possession of goods or of chastity. The rule was, however, relaxed during the rainy season, when Mahāvīra, like his subsequent followers, made a practice of remaining for four months at the same place, lest he should injure any of the young life that springs so suddenly and abundantly into being, once the monsoon bursts and the rains, on which India’s prosperity depends, begin to fall. During these twelve years, we are told, he meditated always on himself, on his Ātmā, and walked sinless and circumspect in thought, word and deed.
   ‘As water does not adhere to a copper vessel, or collyrium to mother of pearl (so sins found no place in him); his course was unobstructed like that of Life; like the firmament he wanted no support; like the wind he knew no obstacles; his heart was pure like the water (of rivers or tanks) in autumn; nothing could soil him like the leaf of a lotus; his senses were well protected like those of a tortoise; he was single and alone like the horn of a rhinoceros; he was free like a bird; he was always like the fabulous bird Bhāruṇḍa, valorous like an elephant, strong like a bull, difficult to attack like a lion, steady and firm like Mount Mandara, deep like the ocean, mild like the moon, refulgent like the sun, pure like excellent gold; like the earth he patiently bore everything; like a well-kindled fire he shone in his splendour.’
Many legends are told of Mahāvīra’s absolute absorption in meditation and of his unconsciousness of outward circumstances during these years. One of these stories has a slight resemblance to that of King Alfred and the cakes: Once upon a time the great ascetic sat down to meditate on the outskirts of Kumāragrāma. He crossed his ankles, and, gazing fixedly at the tip of his nose, was soon so immersed in reflection as to be lost to all that went ​on around him. A busy farmer bustled past and asked this man who was sitting down and apparently doing nothing to look after his bullocks till his return. Mahāvīra neither heard the request nor saw the animals, far less took care of them. On his return the farmer saw the apparently idle man still seated doing nothing, but could get no answer from him as to the whereabouts of his beasts and had to go off in search of them. The bullocks meanwhile, having eaten their fill, returned and lay down to rest beside the gentle saint. The poor owner searched for the beasts the whole night through, and was enraged on returning next morning to find where they were, for it seemed to him a plot to steal the animals; so he seized their halter and began to beat Mahāvīra with it. Fortunately the god Indra knew what was happening and interfered in time to stop such sacrilege; but he begged Mahāvīra to allow him in future to guard him himself, or to appoint some other god to do so. The saint, however, refused any protection, saying that, just as a Tīrthaṅkara must always obtain omniscience by his own unaided efforts, so must he attain Mokṣa unprotected by any one. But the gods had grown nervous lest Mahāvīra should be killed inadvertently, so Indra, without the saint's knowledge, appointed one Siddhārtha (a cousin of Mahāvīra's who had become a god) to protect him.
How Mahāvīra attained Omniscience.We have seen that Mahāvīra was born with three degrees of knowledge and had acquired the fourth. He was now, at the end of his twelve years of wandering and penance, to acquire the fifth degree—Kevala jñāna or Omniscience. In the thirteenth year after his renunciation of the world and initiation as an ascetic, Mahāvīra stayed in a place not very far from the Pārasnāth hills called Jṛimbhakagrāma. There was a field there belonging to a farmer ​called Samāga which surrounded an old temple, and through this field the river Ṛijupālikā flowed. One afternoon Mahāvīra was seated under the shade of a Sāla tree in this quiet meadow in deepest meditation. Just as before his initiation, so now he had fasted for two-and-a-half days without even touching water, and as he sat there lost in thought, he peacefully attained supreme knowledge. Henceforth he possessed ‘complete and full, the unobstructed, unimpeded, infinite and supreme, best knowledge and intuition called Kevala jñāna’. His meditations and austerities had been so profound as to destroy the last of all the karma, the enemies to enlightenment, knowledge and freedom, and henceforth his pathway would be unimpeded. Mahāvīra now added to his titles those of Jina (or Conqueror of the Eight Karma, the great enemies), from which Jainism derives its name, Arhata (or Being worthy of Veneration), Arihanta (or Destroyer of Enemies) and Aruhanta or (One who has killed even the roots of karma).
Mahāvīra as a Preacher.Now, as the conqueror of karma and equipped with supreme knowledge, Mahāvīra began to teach his way, and his first sermon was on the five great vows which we shall study later.
The Jaina declare that Mahāvīra’s great message to mankind was that birth is nothing and caste nothing, but karma everything, and on the destruction of karma future happiness depends.
The Brāhmans had laid stress on birth, and had insisted that, however bad a Brāhman were, he would need to do small penance compared with what would be obligatory on even a righteous man of low caste.
Mahāvīra’s contemporary Buddha had taught that in desire lay the cause that led to rebirth; that mental ​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. 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, ​but that everywhere he went he was accompanied by all the monks and nuns who had entered his order (eventually these amounted to fourteen thousand persons), and that magnificent halls of audience were erected for him to preach in. He preached in a language which they call An-akṣarī, which was unintelligible to the common people, so Gautama acted as his interpreter and translated all he said into Magādhī.
According to the Digambara again, the place Mahāvirī loved best of all was Rājagṛiha, the capital of Magādhī. Its king Śreṇika, with his whole army, had gone out to do honour to the saint on his first entry into the country and had been won over by him. The king asked sixty thousand questions concerning the faith, and all of them being satisfactorily answered by Gautama, he entered the order and became one of the staunchest champions of Jainism.
The Śvetāmbara have recorded the names of the places where Mahāvirī stayed during each rainy season, and they cover a period of forty-one years. First, they say, he went to Asthikagrāma (the village of bones). The name of this village, the commentators declare, was originally Vardhamāna (the Kāṭhiāwāḍ Jaina believe it to have been identical with the modern Waḍhwāṇ); but an evil demon, Yakṣa, collected there an enormous heap of bones belonging to all the people he had killed, and on this heap the inhabitants built a temple, hence the change of name.
Mahāvirī then spent three rainy seasons in Ċampā and Pṛiṣṭiċampā (Bihār). As a prophet he cannot have been without honour in his own country, for he spent twelve monsoons at Vaiśālī and its suburb Vāṇijyagrāma, doubtless recruiting for his order, which, having at its head the brother of their king, naturally held out many attractions to the inhabitants. He was also able to win over all the members of the order of Pārśvanātha to which he had originally belonged. He paid even more visits to Rājagṛiha, ​where, as the Śvetāmbara and Digambara both agree, he was much beloved, and whose inhabitants prevailed on him to return fourteen times. Another favourite resort, Mithilā, has provided the Jaina ascetics with a proverb: ‘If Mithilā burns, what have I to lose?’; and it must have been a place of considerable importance, for Mahāvīra spent six monsoons there, and its kings, as we know from other sources, were men of high standing and culture. The great ascetic spent two rainy seasons in Bhadrikā, and then just for one monsoon he went to Ālabhikā, to Puṇitabhūmi, and to Śrāvastī in turn, and his last monsoon he spent at Pāpā (or Pampā).
It will be noticed how closely these travels of Mahāvīra resemble those of Buddha, and this, and the fact that they never met, led to a doubt of Mahāvīra’s separate existence. It must have required no small tact to have won over the members of an order to which he had once belonged and afterwards left, but, despite this tact, Mahāvīra seems never to have possessed the personal charm which Buddha had, a charm which even Western people can feel to-day as they read his story; but the Jaina leader certainly possessed a greater power of organization (a gift which seldom goes with charm), and to this faculty we owe the existence of Jainism in India to-day.
The work of Mahāvīra during these years must have closely resembled that of the Dominican or Franciscan monks who (owing how much of their inspiration to him and his compeers we do not know) were to wander over Europe centuries later.
About a year after gaining Omniscience Mahāvīra became a Tīrthaṇkara, one of those who show the true way across the troubled ocean of life. The path Mahāvīra pointed out for others to follow lay in becoming a member of one of the four Tīrtha—a monk, or nun, if possible, otherwise a devout layman or lay woman.
We come now to the closing scene of Mahāvīra’s life. ​The death of Mahāvīra.He died in his seventy-second year, some fifty years before his rival and contemporary Buddha. Modern research has shown that the traditional dates for his birth and death, 599 B.C. and 527 B.C., cannot be far wrong.
Mahāvīra’s last rainy season was spent in Pāpā, the modern Pāvāpurī, a small village in the Patna district which is still held sacred by the Jaina. The king of Pāpā, Hastipāla, was a patron of Mahāvīra’s, and, according to some accounts, it was in his ‘office of the writers’ that the saint died. Sitting in the Samparyaṅka position, he delivered the fifty-five lectures that explain the results of karma and recited the thirty-six unasked questions (i. e. the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra), and having finished his great lecture on Marudeva he died all alone, and cut asunder the ties of birth, old age and death.
Legends have gathered as thickly round Mahāvīra’s death as round his birth. One tells how nearly all the ruling chiefs of the country had gathered to hear his discourses, and how the saint preached to them with wonderful eloquence for six days; then on the seventh he took his seat upon a diamond throne in the centre of a magnificent hall, which had been specially built for him on the borders of a lake. His hearers had arranged themselves into twelve grades according to their rank, for all were there from the king to the beggar. It was a dark night, but the hall was brilhantly illumined by the supernatural glow that issued from the gods who had come to listen to the illustrious preacher. Mahāvīra preached all night, and towards dawn his hearers fell asleep. The saint knew by his Śukladhyāna that his end was drawing nigh, so he sat reverently with clasped hands and crossed knees (the Samparyaṅka position), and, just as the morning dawned, ​he attained Nirvāṇa, and the people awakened only to find their lord was dead.
Now at last Mahāvīra was freed; his forty-two years as a monk with all their self-denial and austerities had completely exhausted his karma. He had, unaided, worked out his own salvation, and never again could the accumulated energy of his past actions compel him to be reborn, for all their force was spent. The Jaina say there are two Terrible Ones who dog the soul, like policemen attending a prisoner: one is called Birth and one Death. ‘He who is born must die some day or other, and he who is dead must be born in some form or other.’ These two Terrible Ones had no longer any power over Mahāvīra, for the chain of karma that bound him to them had been snapped, and never again could the prisoner be sentenced to life.
All of Mahāvīra’s disciples had been present at his death, save the chief of them, Gautama Indrabhūti. This earliest disciple knew that he could never attain omniscience whilst he was attached to a human being; nevertheless, he could not conquer his love for his master. On the night of Mahāvīra’s death he had been sent on some mission, and whilst absent he was able to overcome this last tie of friendship, and having attained Kevala jñāna, he returned to find the master, whom he no longer loved, dead and the people mourning.
The kings who were present on the night that Mahāvīra died instituted an illumination to commemorate him, for they said, ‘Since the light of intelligence is gone, let us make an illumination of material matter’; and this the Jaina claim to be the origin of the yearly festival of lamps, Divālī, which the Hindus and they alike observe.
Some Digambara give a different version of the saint’s ​death, according to which they say that there was neither hall, illumination, nor audience, but that Mahāvīra died quietly and alone, and when he had passed away only his nails and hair were left, all else had dried up and disappeared with his karma. A new body was made from these relics, which was duly cremated with all fitting ceremony.
Mahāvīra’s enemies record yet another version—that the saint died in a fit of apoplectic rage. But this hardly accords with the character of the man, nor with his probable physical condition after such prolonged austerities.
Both Digambara and Śvetāmbara Jaina love to visit Pāvāpurī at the feast of Divālī. There are several small temples there belonging to both sects, but the main temple is the one which contains the footprints of Mahāvīra, and a narrow stone bridge leads to this shrine over a lake on which bloom white and red lotus lilies.
Previous incarnations of Mahāvīra.Mahāvīra, or rather his jīva, the more orthodox Jaina believe, passed through many incarnations previous to his birth as Mahāvīra. Some of the more modern members of the community believe these to be purely legendary, but they illustrate the Jaina view of karma so pictorially as to be worth quoting here.
Once upon a time Mahāvīra was incarnate as a carpenter called Nayasāra, who worked at his trade in the jungle. One day he met there some tired, travel-worn Jaina sādhus, whom he took pity on and fed. They preached to him in return the Jaina creed, with the result that he became a convert. He met his death later through a branch of a tree falling on him, and was reborn as Mariċī, the grandson of Ṛiṣabhadeva, the first Tīrthaṅkara.
This was the most famous of his early incarnations, and during it he became a Jaina sādhu through listening to a sermon of Ṛiṣabhadeva’s. However, he found the life of an ascetic as usually practised very hard, and the hardest part of all was to remember to control speech, ​word and act, which the Jaina call the three Daṇḍa. This difficulty he evaded by an ingenious mechanical pun. The word Daṇḍa or stick is the same as the word Daṇḍa that connotes the three controls he found it so hard to exercise, so he gathered together three sticks and preached far and wide the comforting doctrine that any ascetic might do what he liked and linger at will on the primrose path of dalliance, provided he carried in his hand three rods. He gained a disciple, Kapila, who preached the doctrine even more vigorously than his master.
Mahāvīra was then reborn a god, and in his next birth was born as a Brāhman, and after that he was born alternately as a god and a Brāhman, with the occasional interlude of being born a king, for countless ages. He was once the famous king Vāsudeva or Tripṛiṣṭa, and during this incarnation he wrought so many evil deeds that he was condemned to spend his next rebirth in hell (Naraka); from there he issued forth in his following incarnation as a lion. When a lion he slew so many people that his evil karma condemned him once more to Naraka for an incarnation; when that was over he became a god, and then a Brāhman, and, alternating between the two, he at last arrived at his twenty-seventh and most famous incarnation as Mahāvīra. During his incarnation as Mariċī he had learned that he was to be the twenty-fourth and last Tīrthaṅkara, whereupon he had been so overcome with pride and joy and had shown so much conceit, that he had accumulated a great weight of karma; it was this that very nearly resulted in his being born a Brāhman, but fortunately his karma was exhausted just before his birth in time to admit of his embryo being removed from ‘the beggarly Brāhman stock’ to the womb of a Kṣatriya lady.
The Jaina women have a story to account for the ​disappointment of the poor Brāhman lady Devānandā, which was due, they say, to her evil karma. In a previous incarnation Devānandā and Triśalā had been sisters-in-law, and Devānandā had taken advantage of their intimacy to steal a priceless jewel from Triśalā, and so, by the automatic working of the law of karma, which invariably makes the punishment fit the crime, her jewel of a son was removed from her and given to the woman she had wronged.
* ↑ See art. Bhakti Mārga in E.R.E.
* ↑ Hoernle, J.A.S.B., 1898, p. 40.
* ↑ Many devout laymen and laywomen repeat them every day at their morning devotions.
* ↑ All mothers of Tīrthaṅkara see first of all this elephant in their dreams, excepting only the mother of Ṛiṣabhadeva, who saw a bull first, hence the child’s name.
* ↑ The Sthānakavāsī say there were two garlands.
* ↑ In all the pictures of this moon vision a stag is seen in the centre of the moon. The general belief of all Indians is that there is either a stag or a hare inhabiting the moon. There are a score or more of names for the moon in Sanskrit, and a dozen at least are derived from this belief. The villagers, however, find in the moon an old woman spinning a wheel and a she-goat standing by her.
* ↑ The Digambara assert that she saw the sun before the dream about the moon.
* ↑ According to the Tapagaċċha sect the pole was topped by a temple roof.
* ↑ The Sthānakavāsī believe this abode to have been a huge immovable car as big as a city.
* ↑ A really orthodox Jaina, however, would deny the title of Jaina altogether to any one who did not hold these and all the other legends mentioned in this book to be literally and historically true, though varying interpretations of them are given.
* ↑ The Jaina believe that Indra (or Śakra), the chief of the sixty-four gods of that name, belongs especially to them, but has been stolen from them by the Brāhmans.
* ↑ It is interesting to compare with this the story of Kṛiṣṇa being removed from the womb of Devakī to that of Rohiṇī, for the Jaina believe Kṛiṣṇa to be one of their own future Tīrthaṅkara.
* ↑ Āċārāṅga Sūtra, S.B.E, xxii, p. 192.
* ↑ Or Nāyaputra, sometimes Nātaputta.
* ↑ Kalpa Sūtra, S.B.E., xxii, p. 250.
* ↑ He had five nurses: a wet nurse, a nurse to wash him, one to dress him, one to play with him, and one to carry him.
* ↑ Āċārāṅga Sūtra, S.B.E., xxii, p. 194.
* ↑ See below, Twelve Vows of a Layman, p. 205.
* ↑ The Śvetāmbara call the park Sundavana, the Digambara Sārathi Khaṇḍa.
* ↑ The Jaina believe that when an ascetic who will eventually develop into Tīrthaṅkara is about to give away his possessions, the god Indra bestows on him all the wealth that has been buried in forgotten treasure stores, in order that the amount to be given away may be worthy of the giver.
* ↑ This sort of throne is called a Pāṇḍuśilā, and in Jaina temples Mahāvīra's image is generally kept on one.
* ↑ The Kalpa Sūtra gives quite a different account, in which it says that Mahāvīra fasted for two-and-a-half days after all the pomp, and then, ‘Quite alone, nobody else being present, he tore out his hair, and leaving the house entered the state of houselessness’. Kalpa Sūtra, S.B.E., xxii, p. 259.
* ↑ नवरो बेठो नखोद वाळे.
* ↑ The Brāhmans had tried to avoid some of the more obvious abuses by restricting entrance to the fourth āśrama to men of mature years, who had passed through a long course of preparatory discipline.
* ↑ Lecture on Jainism. Agra, 1902, p. 69.
* ↑ Buddhism, p. 530.
* ↑ There is a Gujarātī couplet: ‘Water should be allowed to flow that it become not stagnant, Monks should be allowed to wander that they may be stainless.’ A Sanskrit proverb runs : ‘A monk who wanders is worshipped.’
* ↑ Kalpa Sūtra, S. B. E., xxii, pp. 260, 261.
* ↑ Also called Jṛimbhilā or Jṛimbhikagrāma.
* ↑ Or Samāka or Sāmaka.
* ↑ Or Ṛijukula, or Ṛijuvālikā.
* ↑ If Mahāvīra had preached before he got Kevala jñāna, his sermons would have contained some mistakes; now of course they were perfect.
* ↑ See Introduction, S. B.E., xxii, p. xxxi.
* ↑ Hoernle, A. S. B., p. 42. Buddha’s dates are 557–477 B.C.
* ↑ The word the Jaina prefer to use instead of Death is Mṛityu Mahotsava or Great Death Festival.
* ↑ Kalpa Sūtra, S. B. E., xxii, p. 264 ff.
* ↑ It was only for sixty-four years after Mahāvīra’s death that it was possible for any one to obtain Kevala jñāna, but during that time not only Gautama but also Sudharma (on Gautama’s death) and Jambū (on Sudharma’s death) became omniscient.
* ↑ Kalpa Sūtra, S. B. E., xxii, p. 266.
* ↑ King Bharāta had once asked his father Ṛiṣabhadeva who would be among the next Tīrthaṅkara, and Ṛiṣabhadeva had pointed to Mariċī who was sitting last in the assembly.