Heart of Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Mrs Sinclair Stevenson

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THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA The legend runs that the god Indra himself gave Mahā. vira the beautiful robe which he wore at his initiation. Before the ceremony the saint had given away all his goods in charity, but a certain Brāhman named Somadatta, being absent at that time, had received nothing. He came and complained, and Mahāvīra was greatly troubled to think that he had nothing left to give him, till he remembered Indra's robe; taking this off, he cut it in two and gave half to the greedy Brāhman. Somadatta was delighted, and showed it off with great pride to a friend of his who was a weaver. The weaver told Somadatta to go back and get the other half and then he would have a robe worth having, which could all be woven into one. The Brāhman was ashamed to actually go and ask for the remaining part, but knowing how completely unconscious of everything that went on around him Mahāvira was, he walked softly behind the ascetic, and when the robe slipped off (as is the nature of half robes) he stooped, and gently lifting it off the thorns on to which it had fallen, quietly made off with his booty. When Mahāvīra discovered the theft, all he did was to make a parable about it, in which he taught how thorny would be the road of his true disciples in this world, but how priceless would be their value when delivered at last from the thorns that beset them.
Not only was the great ascetic unconscious of the whereabouts of his earthly possessions, he was also absolutely indifferent to pain; for instance, one day he was sitting in meditation outside a village, when some herdsmen, in rough sport, lit a fire between his feet and drove nails into his ears, without the saint being in the least aware of what they were doing.
In India it would be specially easy for abuses to spring up among a body of mendicants; they could gain their food so easily, that a great part of the long Indian day' would hang idle on their hands, and our proverb about Satan finding work for idle hands to do has its Gujarāti