________________
THE TIRTHANKARAS AND LORD MAHAVIRA
of the dark half of the month Pusya in the year 1039 B. C. According to tradition his birth took place 2,750 years after Lord Neminatha had attained Nirvāņā. He belonged to Ugra Vamsa and Kasyapa-gotra. His royal emblem was a hooded cobra. He was a great reformer and had a stately personality. Even from his boyhood he was full of compassion.
37
It is usual to associate every great personality with some incidents that speak of his heroic power or divine nature.
It is said that when once the prince was walking in a forest, he saw an ascetic who was no other than Mahipala, his maternal grandfather. Mahipala had renounced the world on the death of his queen and gone to a forest to practise penance. He was then practising austere penance by being surrounded by five fires. Parsva was hurt. Then Mahipala started cutting a tree for fuel to feed the fires around him. Prince Pārsvanatha understood by his mental powers that there were two living serpants in that branch of the tree which he was cutting. Thereupon, he advised the ascetic not to cut the tree as there were a male and a female serpants in it and that austerities of the type he was practising were not conducive to spiritual elevation. The ascetic did not heed his advice and went on thoughtlessly cutting the tree. To his great dismay, he saw two serpants emerging from the branch of the tree he had cut. The serpants were reeling with pain and were actually dying. Prince Parsvanatha took pity on them and out of affection for them, repeated loudly the Panca-Namokaramantra before them. The snakes died while hearing the holy Mantra and were born in the Nagaloka as Dharanendra and his queen Padmavati. It may be mentioned that in most of the Jaina temples where there is the image of Lord Pāśvanāta as the presiding god, there are images of these two Yaksa and Yakṣiņi.
When the prince attained thirty years of his age he heard that King Devasena of Saketapura was celebrating the pañcaKalyāņa pūjās of Lord Rṣabhadeva. He went there and came to know how the Lord had renounced the world. He felt that life
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
