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322 Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
traversed, from east to west, by six insurmountable mountainranges, which divide it into seven continents, viz., the two segments of 'Bharata' and 'Airavata' in the south and north respectively, and, between the latter two, following one another from south to north, the five zones of 'Haimavata', 'Hari-kṣetra', 'Mahāvideha', 'Ramyaka-kṣetra' and 'Hairanyavata'. The central one of these seven continents, Mahāvideha, is the largest. It is diagonally traversed by four insurmountable mountain-ranges, radiating, as it were, from Mt. Meru, the hub of Jambu-dvīpa. 'Mahävideha' is thus sub-divided into four parts, viz., 'Devakuru' and 'Uttarakuru' south and north of the Meru, and ‘Pūrvavideha' and 'Aparavideha' in the east and west respectively. Devakuru and Uttarakuru are often grouped together as 'the two Kurus', while Pūrvavideha and Aparavideha are referred to as 'the two Videhas', or as 'Mahāvideha' in the narrower sense. Each of the two 'Videhas' is again subdivided into two portions by a huge river named 'Sītä'. Each of those portions has eight provinces, which are known as 'Vijayas', and in fact are independent worlds of their own, the boundaries of which are untransgressible for the human beings and animals inhabiting them. The whole of Mahāvideha has thus 32 Vijayas. Such a 'Vijaya' is referred to in the Sīmandhara-stavana ( st. 16).
Three out of the seven continents of Jambū-dvīpa, viz., Bharata, Airāvata and Mahāvideha in the narrower sense, are grouped together as the 'Karmabhūmis'. There, people have to work to earn their livelihood, and Tīrthankaras appear, creating the spiritual basis from which salvation can be attained, a feat which is not possible anywhere else in the universe.
Among the three 'Karmabhūmis', again, Bharata and Airavata occupy a separate position. For only there, the 'Kālacakra', the 'Wheel of Time', revolves, alternately bringing into play, in never ending crescendo-decrescendo, periods of evolution, called 'Utsarpiņīs', and such of degeneration, or 'Avasarpinis', each of them being sub-divided into six 'Aras' or spokes, i.e., sub
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