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

Page 82

17. Kunthunatha.
18. Aranätha.
19. Mallinatha.
56
MAHAVIRA'S PREDECESSORS
of this saint lies in the fact that he was the first Tirthankara to become a čakravarti,1 or emperor of the whole of Bharata (i. e. India). Sāntinātha's height was forty bow-shots, and his emblem is the deer. He attained mokşa from Mt. Pārsvanatha in Bengal in company with nine hundred Sadhus. With the exception of four, all the Tirthankara passed to nirvāņa from this hill.
After half a palya of time the seventeenth Tirthankara was born in Gajapuri, where his parents, King Śivarāja and Queen Śridevi, 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.
Queen Devi, wife of King Sudarsana of Hastinapura, saw a vision of a bank of jewels before the birth of her son, the eighteenth Tirthankara, who was born a quarter palya of time after Kunthunatha. Aranatha was thirty bow-shots in height, his emblem is the third kind of svastika (the Nandavartta), he was also an emperor, and he passed to mokşa from Sameta Šikhara (Mt. Pārsvanatha) with a thousand monks.
The nineteenth Tirthankara is the most interesting of all, for owing to deceitfulness in a previous life this saint was born as a woman; having, however, done all the twenty things that make an ascetic a Tirthankara, nothing could prevent his becoming one, but his previous deceitfulness resulted in his becoming a female Tirthankara. She was born in Mithila, where her parents, King Kumbera and
1 There have been twelve of these great rulers, and these with the twenty-four Tirthankara, nine Baladeva, nine Vasudeva, and nine Prati-vasudeva make up the sixty-three Great Heroes of the Jaina. 2 Risabhadeva, Väsupūjya, Neminatha and Mahāvīra. 3 See p. 121.