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MAHAVIRA.
13
his life
the founder of the Jain Church and the rise of its reformer. But here stops the credible element in the canonical history of the Jains. For, Parsvanāth's predecessor, Arishtanemi, is stated to have died 84,000 years before Mahāvīra's Nirvāna. We are here concerned only with Mahāvīra from whom the real history of the Jain Church commences. It is from Mahāvīra that we trace those illustrious lines of preachers and gurus who played an important part in moulding the religious and political life of many ancient Hindu states.
The son of the chief of the Natha clan of the Mahāvīra : Kshatriyas (Nātạputta), Mabāvīra Vardhamāna and caroor. was like the Buddha, of high aristocratic descent, his father Siddarta being the head of a Kshatriya clan and the governing king of an oligarchic republic consisting of Visali, Kundaggama and Vaniyaggama. Born in or about, 599 B.C., he entered the spiritual career at the age of thirty ; and addressing himself mainly to-members of the aristocracy, joined the order of Parsvanāth.
The observances of this order did not seem to have satisfied Mahāvīva’s notions of stringency, one of the cardinal points of which, we are told, was absolute nudity. He therefore remained only for one year within the order of Parsvanāth and then separated from it. Discarding then completely his clothes, he wandered about for a period of twelve years through the country of
1 This seems to be the Svētāmbara view.
