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फेब्रुअरी २०११
years for the duration (tirtha-kala) of the Order of Mendicants established by a given Tirthankara, counting the years probably on the model of the Vira-nirvana-samvat. (See JainendraSiddhanta-Kosha, II, p. 390.)
१६१
From this it is possible to calculate the number of years that separate the last three Tirthankaras: Nemi> Parshva> Mahavira. The Jainas believe that the twenty-third Tirthankara Pārshva attained nirvana at the age of 100, and that this event happened 178 years before the birth of the twenty-fourth Tirthankara Mahavira. This will yield the dates 599-526 B.C. for Mahāvira, and 877-777 B.C. for Pārshva, both living within the first millennium B.C.
As was seen above, both Shvetambara and Digambara traditions agree that Tirthankara Nemi was a contemporary of Krishna, Balarama, and the five Pandava brothers. Since Vadicandra's Pandavas are the same as the Pandavas of the Mahābhārata, the date of Tirthankara Nemi should be the same as that of the Pandavas, namely, 3,200 B.C. Nemi is said to have lived for one thousand years. Let us assume that Nemi was born in 4,300 B.C. and died in 3,300 B.C. This would provide the tirtha-kāla, between Tirthankara Nemi and Parshva, to be 2423 years (3300-877- 2423).
But this date would not be acceptable to the Jaina tradition. The Jainas unanimously place Tirthankara Nemi in a remote past, measured not in thousands but in tens of thousands of years, to be precise, eighty-four thousand, three hundred and eighty (84,380) years, before the birth of Tirthankara Parshva!
Acarya Hemacandra's statement, in the court of Siddharaja Jayasimha, about the plurality of the Pandavas, his unprecedented assertion that the Jaina Pandavas are different from the Pandavas of the Mahābhārata, thus stands vindicated, a testimony to his reputation as Kalikāla-sarvajna!
