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

Page 73

MAHĀVĪRA’S NON-VIOLENCE IN MODERN SCIENTIFIC AGE
D. S. Parmaj
How time was opportune for Lord Mahavira's Advent ?
If we look back into the past history with a searching mind to the social condition prevailing in India twety-five hundred years ago, it unmistakably indicates that the then Society had sunk to the lowest possible depths of ignorance, illusion, superstition, and violence, leading to social, economic, moral, cultural degeneration, not to speak of spiritual decline. Society was divided into numerous castes and creeds, one warning against the other in the name of false religion. Lord Mahāvīra, was born with realy a royal heroic heart, knew no fear from childhood, as his very name itself suggests, and soon grew up into an youthful prince with a prophetic vision and an Universal message to fulfil. He looked around and found that social unity and its re-construction was his inmediate mission for the fulfilment of which no price would be too dear, nor any sacrifice too great. So he decided to give up his royal life with all its earthly pomp and glory, lest it should prove to be an obstacle in realization of his Universal-mission for establishing peace and harmony in the society of his time.
After twelve year's life of ascerticism and meditation he attained real or transcendental knowledge. Dr, Zimmer, a German intellect and a western scholar, observes "The task of the Jain naked sage is to plunge even below, the below beyond the beyond, to break the mask even of highest god. This is the work of Release (Mokşa), the task of the naked sage (Jivanmukta) "one released in life". Lord Mahāvīra then spoke to the ignorant, suffering masses in their own