Heart of Jainism

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

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36
THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA
known story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven. Adam and Eve were naked and pure. They enjoyed perfect happiness in the garden of Eden. They had no knowledge of good and evil. The devil, their enemy, desired to deprive them of their happiness. He made them eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They at once saw their nakedness. They fell. They were expelled from heaven. It is this knowledge of good and evil, it is this knowledge of nakedness, that deprived them of Eden. The Jains hold the same belief. Our knowledge of good and evil, our knowledge of nakedness, keeps us away from salvation. To obtain it we must forget nakedness. The Jaina Nirgranthas have forgot all knowledge of good and evil. Why should they require clothes to hide their nakedness?')
Sir Monier Williams suggests 2 that the Jaina 'felt that a sense of shame implied sin, so that if there were no sin in the world there would be no shame. Hence they argued rather illogically that to get rid of clothes was to get rid of sin, and every ascetic who aimed at sinlessness was enjoined to walk about naked with the air or sky (dig) as his sole covering.'
The Digambara believe that Mahavira abandoned clothes at the time of his initiation; the Svetāmbara, as we have seen, that he abandoned them after thirteen months.
It was whilst Mahāvīra was walking naked and homeless and, as the Digambara believe, keeping absolutely un. broken his vow of silence, that he was joined by Gośāla, a disciple whose story we shall have to study more in detail later. For the present we need only note that Gośāla followed Mahāvīra for six years, but subsequently left him and fell into those grievous sins which so easily beset a mendicant, and to guard against which so many precepts in the Jaina scriptures are directed.
For twelve years Mahāvira wandered from place to place, never staying for longer than a single night in a village or for more than five nights in a town. The object of this custom may have been to avoid levying too great
i Lecture on Jainisin. Agra, 1902, p. 69. 2 Buddhism, p. 530.