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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
4. karman, pre-ordaining family, social rank, etc.
So long as particles of these four categories of karman remain unconsumed, the Saint retains his human body, and wanders about, passionless, perfect, preaching the true religion, adored by mortals, immortals and animals. Innumerable beings gain spiritual enlightenment and follow in his path, both in the figurative and the literal sense. In this way, a “Tīrtha' is formed, i.e., the prototype of the fourfold community, consisting of ascetics and laymen, both male and female, professing the newly revived eternal Jaina Faith, which had been dormant since the Nirvāṇa of the preceding Tīrthankara. Many members of this Tīrtha become 'Kevalins', i.e., omniscient saints, and precede the Tīrthankara to final salvation ( 'Mokşa' or 'Siddhi') as Siddhas, i.e., emancipated, perfect souls to reside for ever at the top of the universe, from where there is no return into the Saṁsāra or circle of metempsychosis. A time comes when the Tīrtharkara himself enters Mokşa, his store of karman being exhausted. From that time onward, omniscience again becomes unattainable for all, excepting a few sporadic cases happening in the immediately following decades. The existing ‘Kevalins' enter Nirvāņa. Then, Mokșa too can no longer be attained, till, after aeons over aeons, another Tirthankara appears.
The only feature which distinguishes a Tīrthankara from the infinite number of likewise perfect ‘Kevalins', is the fact that the former initiates a period of religious revival, founds a 'Tīrtha', whose supreme leader he remains during his lifetime, and gives, as it were, the signals for the opening and closing of the gate to salvation by the beginning and end respectively of his Tīrthankara activity, as pre-ordained by a peculiar type of karman, a variety of ‘punya’ of the most exalted degree, named “Tīrtharkara-nāmakarman'.
Not content with this definition of the personality of a Tīrtharkara, Jaina hagiography describes him as invariably distinguished by a number of stereotyped 'eminences'. Thus, every
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