Indian Antiquary Vol 02

SR No.: 032494
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 428
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 153

MAY, 1873.]
he ought to marry. At first he refused, but after a deal of reviling and reproaching he consented, and Krishna selected for him Râjîmati the daughter of Ugrasena of Girnår, whose palace is still shewn, being a ruin near the Junagadh fort beside the Bhumriyo kuo. When the wedding day came and Neminatha approached Junagadh, he saw a flock of sheep and herds of cattle collected to be sacrificed for the people that had assembled to celebrate the wedding; the sheep were bleating piteously, and, struck with pity for them and the vanity of human happiness, and to save the lives of so many animals, he resolved to become an ascetic, gave up the world, and retired into the Girnar hills, followed by his intended bride, and there they both led a platonic life. The place on the Ujjinta peak where he is said to have died is considered sacred, and has a chattri erected over it where his paglá or footprints are shown. Rajîmatî resided in a gupha or cave to the south-west of the Neminatha Chattri.*
THE TIRTHANKARAS.
"He became an ascetic at the age of three hundred, at Dvârakâ (Magadhî Baravavâe). He lived seven hundred years as an ascetic,-in all a thousand years. He was only fifty-five days an imperfect ascetic." The date of his death was 84,000 years before the close of the fourth age. To him the mango-tree is sacred.
23. PARSVA or PARÁVANATHA was son of King Asvasena by Vâmâ or Bâm â Devi; of the race of Ikshwâku; figured with a blue complexion, having a hooded snake (seshaphani) for his cognizance, and is often represented as sitting under the expanded hoods of a snake with many heads, much like the socalled Någa figures at Ajanta and elsewhere.
The Parsvanátha Charitra states that whilst Parávanâtha was engaged in his devotions his enemy Kamatha caused a great rain to fall upon him; but the serpent Dharanidhara eame, and, as Seva någari, oversha owed his head as with a chhatra. In the Satrunjaya, Mahatmya Dharana the Naga king is re
This account, by a Jaina priest, agrees with that given in the Satrunjaya Mahat. Sarg. XIII.
tStevenson, Kalpa Sutra, p. 98: In the Uttara Purana of the Southern Jainas, Krishna is styled Trikhandadhipati, or lord of three portions of the world, and he is the disciple of the Tirthankara Neminatha.-Wilson, Mack. Coll. vol. I. p. 146.
"The life of this celebrated Jina, who was perhaps the real founder of the sect, is the subject of a poem entitled Parivanatha Charitra."-Colebrooke, Essays, ut sup. II. 212; Asiat. Res., vol. IX. p. 309. It was written by
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presented as approaching to worship Pâréva while engaged in his second kayotsarga or profound meditation, at Sivapurî in the Kausâmbaka forest, and holding his outspread hood (phana) over him as an umbrella. From this the town obtained the name of Ahichhatra.§ His Śâsanadevi was Padmavati. He was born at Bhelûpurâ in the suburbs of Varanasi (Benares); married Prabhavatî the daughter of King Prasenajita; and, according to the Kalpa Sûtra, "adopted an ascetic life, with three hundred others, when he was thirty years of age, and for eighty days he practised austerities before arriving at perfect wisdom. He lived after this seventy years less eighty days. his whole term of life being one hundred years, after which he obtained liberation from passion and freedom from pain. He wore one garment, and had under his direction a large number of male and female ascetics." His death took place two hundred and fifty years before that of the last Tirthankara (i. e., B. c. 777). He died while, with thirty others, performing a fast on the top of Mount Sammeya or Samet Sikhar.
24. VARDHAMANA, also called V IRA, MAHAVIRA, VARDHAMANA PRABHU, &c., and surnamed Charama tirthakṛit, or last of the Jinas, and emphatically Sramana or the saint. He was the son of Siddhartha by Trisala, T of the race of Ikshvâka and family of Kasyapa; born at Chitrakot cr Kundagrâma, and described as of a golden complexion, having the lion (sinha) as his cognizance. His Sasana was Siddhayika devi. His life is the subject of the Kalpa Sútra, which professes to have been composed by Bhadrabâ hu Svâ mi of Anandapura, now Badnagar, in the reign of Druvasena, 980 years after the death of Mahavira, -i. e. A. D. 454.
Mahavira's paternal uncle was Supâráva, his elder brother Nandivardhan a, his sister (mother of Jamali)-Sudará an â. His wife was Yasôdà, by whom he had a daughter named Anôjja and Priyadarsan â, who became
Briddha Tapa Gachha in Samvat 1654, and occasionally calls this Jina by the name of Jagannatha.-Delamaine, Asiat. Trans. vol. I. pp. 428-436.
§ Mah. XIV. 31-35 Compare Bigandet, Legend of Gaudama, 2nd ed. p. 99 (1st ed. p. 69); Hardy's Buddhism, p. 182.
Stevenson's Kalpa Sutra, Chap. VII. pp. 97, 98.
See the story of his birth in Max Müller's Hist. Sansk. Liter. p. 261, quoted from the Kalpa Satra, pp. 35, 36, also an account of his life in H. H. Wilson's Works, vol. I. pp. 291-804.