Doctrine of Jainas

Author(s): Walther Shubring, Wolfgang Beurlen
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 52

DOCTRINE OF THE JAINAS
information, however, is due to the Buddhists confusing the city of Pāvā, where Mahāvīra died, with the Pävä, where Buddha stayed shortly before his end, thus concluding that he survived Mahavira1. The latter's Pāvā is referred to as majjhuma. This may indicate that for once (perhaps owing to illness) he dwelt in the city proper, and he may well have done so since his quarters were in the residence of a high official in Prince Hatthipala's service. At any rate he died there in his 72nd year, forty-two years after he had become a monk. Acc. to modern belief Pāvā is the village of Pavapuri in the district of Patna2. Thus Mahāvira's life passed within a narrow frame of space All his days he, the aristocrat, had enjoyed the sympathy and the support of the nobles of the country. We have already mentioned his princely relations3, and in Viy 792b we read that the notables and the noble families of his time adhered to him and his teaching which they helped to spread. Now the collegial princes (ganarāyāno) of the Mallaki and Licchavi familics gave a lamp-cercmony in commemoration of him. Mahāvīrā's death or, rather, in terms of spiritual language, his entry into Nirvāna represents to the Jains the point from where their chronology starts The Svetambaras (§ 26) place it 470 years before the beginning of the Vikrama era (57-56 B.C.), the Digambaras (§26) 605 years before the Saka era (78 A.D.), the latter being also crroneously taken for the Vikrama era. By critically dealing with these statements which both lead back to 527-526 B C., JACOBI (1879) calculated the year of 467 B.C., and CHARPENTIER tried to support this date by a new line of argument. In 1891
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I CHARPENTIER in the essay to be presently mentioned, JACOBI SPAW 1930, 557ff where ref are made to Journal of Francis BUCHANAN etc see §1f-Comp also Puran Chand NAHAR, Pāvapuri and its Temple Prashasti (1698) IHQ 1, 116-119
2 Imp Gaz of I. 20, 81
3 Without himself having shut his eyes to the abusive reigning of major and minor princes (Thân 125b)-The author of the Angaculiya considers Mahavira's teaching aristocratic to a degree that he refers to the transition of the dhamma to the Vaisyas (cattari vanṇāna majjhe varssa-hatthe dhammo bhavissat) as a bad omen
4 For passages comp the writings presently mentioned and Satis Chandra VIDYABHUSHANÁ, Logic, p 11, PATHAK IA 12, 21f.
5
Kalpasūtra p 8
6. IA 43 (1914), 115 ff