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52 MAHĀVĪRA' HIS LIFE AND TEACHINGS and the youngest to king Srenika Bimbisāra of Magadha. One joined the religious Order of Mahāvīra and the other four 'were married in one or the other royal family of Eastern India'. There may be some truth in the suggestion made by Mr Chimanlal J Shah that these princesses were instrumental in the propagation of Jainism in Northern India?
The Kalpa-Sūtra definitely records that Mahāvīra 'lived thirty years as a householder, more than full twelve years in a state inferior to perfection, something less than thirty years as a Kevalin, forty-two years as a (recluse), and seventy-two years on the whole'. That at the age of seventy-two, in the town of Pāvā, and in king Hastipāla's office of the writers, Mahāvīra died, freed from all pains
Some nine centuries elapsed since his demise when the council of Valabhi under the presidency of Devarddhı inet to make a final redaction of the words of Mahāvīra as handed down by an oral tradition, and caused the same to be written in books These sacred books of the Jain Agama or Siddhānta, all worded in Ardha-Māgadhī, represent the oldest known literary monument in
? Jainism in Northern India, pp. 88 foll.
