Bhagavana Mahavira and his Relevance in Modern Times

Author(s): Narendra Bhanavat, Prem Suman Jain, V P Bhatt
Publisher: Akhil Bharat Varshiya Sadhumargi Jain Sangh

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Mahāvira and His Relevance
Mahāvīra, by Ajīvika Teachers like Gosala, by Sāṁkhya philosophers like Kapila and promulgators of Buddhism like Buddha.
With the political freedom of our land, there is great enthusiasm all over the country, particularly patent and eloquent among the educated classes who have started revaluing the ancient Indian heritage in a new perspective. It is in the fitness of things that great personalities like Mahāvīra and Buddha are remembered with reverence in this context. I have often wondered how these great Teachers, whose preachings have such an abiding human appeal, could have been somewhat neglected for some time in the very land which they enriched and elevated in its moral stature. It is, however, a happy augury that their greatness is being appreciated to-day all the more. As usual, it is an irony with us, that Western Scholarship has to make us aware of the greatness of our men and matters. Very valuable work in the fields of Jaina and Buddhist literatures was done by Western savants; and to-day, we are in a position to appreciate the greatness of Mahavira and Buddha; better than we could do in earlier days.
Mahāvīra was a contemporary of Buddha, and he stands as the 24th Tirthařkara whose preachings fully breathe the spirit of what I have called the Eastern stream of thought in India. All that Mahāvīra and his predecessors have preached goes under the name of Jainism to-day, but that should not come in the way of our appreciating and putting into practice the great principles preached by Mahāvīra which stand to-day embedded and elaborately interpreted in Jaina literature in different languages.
Those of you who have visited Bihar can testify to the fertility of that part of India but more than that, in the history of Indian thought and culture Bihar has played an important role. The great champions of Ātman philosophy like Buddha, Janaka and Mahāvīra hail from this part. It is Mithila in Bihar that has made substantial contributions to Mimāṁsā, Nyāya and Vaiseșika systems. Some 2500 years ago, Vaiśālī (modern Basarh, some 30 miles to the north of Patna) was a prosperous capital. Suburb of it was called Kundapura or Kșatriyakunda; and here in the place of King Siddhārtha of his queen Trišalā or Priyakariņi Mahāvira was born; to emphasise his various outstanding traits, he was also known as Jñāta-putra, Vaiśālīya, Vardhamāna, Sanmati, etc. His mother belonged to the family of Cetaka, the mighty Licchavi ruler of