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JAINISM. a younger son of Siddhartha, a Khsatriya noble or Mohoving chief of Kundagramma, not far from Vesali,
4. already mentioned in our account of Buddhism, and the wife of Siddhartha, was sister of the king of Vesali, and related to the king of Magadha. At the age of twenty-eight Mahavira became an ascetic, and spent twelve years in self-mortification. After that period he became recognised as a prophet and saint, or Tirthankara (meaning conqueror or leader of a school of thought), and spent the remaining thirty years of his life in teaching and in organising his order of ascetics, mostly within the kingdom of Magadha, but also travelling to Sravasti and the foot of the Himalayas. · Mahavira is referred to in the Buddhist books under his well-known name Nataputta, as the head of the rival sect of Niganthas, or Jains, and several contemporaries are referred to in the books of both religions. We may put down Mahavira's date as about the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., but the earliest extant works of the Jains do not go beyond the third century, and were not reduced to writing till the fifth or sixth century A.D. It is very doubtful how far Mahavira is indebted to Parsva, his predecessor, according to the Kalpa Sutra, by about two centuries. The lives of the earlier Jains, like those of the predecessors of Gautama, are altogether mythical. Adinath is the earliest of them.
The life of Mahavira, as related in the Kalpa Sutra, contains but few details, and is very far from having the interest of that of his great contemporary. He is declared to have torn out his hair, on entering the ascetic life, to have gone naked for eleven years, and to have abandoned all care of his body. All perfections of circumspect conduct and self-restraint are attributed to him. He at last reached the highest knowledge, unobstructed and full, so as to become omniscient. At his death he became a Buddha, a Mukta (a liberated soul), putting an end to all misery, finally liberated, freed from all pains.
“Mahavira," says Professor Jacobi," was of the ordinary class of religious men in India. He may be allowed a talent for religious matters, but he possessed not the
