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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
loyal lady-devotee of Mahāvīra, is to be reborn as the 16th Tīrthankara of the coming Utsarpiņi of Bharata. In the same way, King Śreņika, the ruler of Magadha during Mahāvīra's time, and one of his layman-followers, is to be the first and Śrī-Krsna, cousin and layman-follower of Neminātha, the past 22nd Tīrthankara of Bharata, is to be the 21st Tīrthankara of the future. 34
At present, anyhow, those future Tīrthankaras are assumed to be still roaming about in a state of relative imperfection, and are, therefore, little satisfactory objects of worship. The past ones, on the other hand, are supposed to have shed their human shape, and, having attained final salvation, to be no longer capable of action nor of interest in mundane affairs, and, therefore, utterly of reach of the worshipper's imagination. Still, Tirtharkara-worship forms one of the six Āvaśyakas or daily observances of every Jaina, meant to effect internal purification. In view of this aim, all the Tīrthankaras are considered equal, and full scope is left to the personal liking of the worshipper in addressing his hymn or his prayer to any one out of them, or even to a particular statue at a particular place of pilgrimage, imagined to represent the Tīrthankara by 'sthāpanā'. What is more natural than that the worshipper should turn his mental sight towards the distant world of Mahāvideha, or rather of the several Mahāvidehas, where at this very moment, the twenty 'Viharamanas' are wandering about in actual human shape, and yet perfect in their supernatural knowledge and their absolute purity of thinking, feeling and acting, apparently much nearer in approach for the naïve type of bhakti than those past and future Tirthankaras. Both the Digambaras and the Svetāmbaras have lists of names of those twenty Viharamāṇas'35, as well as a number of hymns addressed to one or the other or to all of them. A special favourite among them is the Lord Sīmandhara, to whom one of the hymns published below, is addressed. He is believed to live at present, in the full possession of omniscience, in the Vijaya 'Puşkaravara' of the Pūrvavideha of Jambū-dvipa, having a body-height of 500 dhanu ( = 2,000 cubits).
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