Mahavira and his Teaching

SR No.: 008019
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti
Publication Year: 1977
Total Pages: 509
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Biography, Religion, & Principle
File Size: 12 MB

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The Portuguese Jesuit father, Manuel Pinheiro, in two letters1 'written whilst on a mission from Goa to the court of the Moghul emperor in 1595 described a congregation of some fifty Verteas he encountered in Surat. He was impressed by their life of poverty and celibacy and their practice of tearing out the hair of the head and beard, and was amazed to see their superior, before sitting down, brush the ground with a small besom "like a paint-brush made of cotton threads". He heard the reason for this and why, too, they wore mouth-veils, and learned that they drank hot water, not from fear of catching cold, but because water had a soul which would perish if the liquid were swallowed unboiled. Since the beginning of the world, hundreds of thousands of years earlier, God had sent twenty-four apostles of whom the last, two millennia ago, had left behind a written scripture.
The rajoharana and mukhavastrikā figure also in the account of the Vartias given by the famous Portuguese historian, Joao de Barros,2 which itself is based on the narrative of another Catholic missionary.3 These Indian monks, he explains, "live by begging their food which they may not keep over from one day to the next. They attach such importance to saving life that they reprehend the construction of tanks lest fish should perish in them, and will not have a candle lit by night lest some insect be burned in it."
A French priest, Pierre du Jarric, who compiled a history of missionary activities also used this description of the Vartias, stressing the sincerity of their faith and their insistence in entreating Christians to prevent the taking of life. Another Frenchman, 1. Given in G. Peruschi's Informazione del regno e stato del gran re di Mogor, Venice 1597 pp. 21
Decadas de Asta; Decada IV Madrid 1615 p 276
F. Guerreiro Relação annual das cousas da India dos annos 1606 e 1607, liv. III, cap. 12
Histoire des choses plus memorables. Bordeaux 1608-14 Vol. I pp. 494-6 & Vol. III, pp. 222-3
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R. WILLIAMS
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