Religious Quest of India

SR No.: 011031
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J N Farquhar, Griswold
Publisher: J N Farquhar Griswold
Total Pages: 365
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

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38
THE LIFE OF MAHAVIRA
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 bcasts and had to go off in scarch of them. The bullocks meanwhile, having caten 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 stcal the animals; so he seized their halter and began to beat Mahāvira with it. Fortunately the god Indra knew what was happening and interfered in time to stop such sacrilege ; but he begged Mahāvira 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 Tīrthankara must always obtain omniscience by his own unaided efforts, so must he attain Mokşa unprotected by any one. But the gods had grown nervous lest Mahavira should be killed inadvertently, so Indra, without the saint's knowledge, appointed one Siddhärtha (a cousin of Mahavira's who had become a god) to protect him.
Enlightenment and Death. How
We have seen that Mahāvīra was born with three degrees Mahāvīra of knowledge and had acquired the fourth. He was now, attained Omni" at the end of his twelve years of wandering and penance, science. 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 Pärasnāth hills called Jrimbhaka. grāma. There was a field there belonging to a farmer
Also called Jřimbhilā or Jřimbhikagrāma.