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THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA on around him. A busy farmer bustled past and asked this man who was sitting down and apparently doing nothing to look after his bullocks till his return. Mahāvira neither heard the request nor saw the animals, far less took care of them. On his return the farmer saw the apparently idle man still seated doing nothing, but could get no answer from him as to the whereabouts of his beasts and had to go off in search of them. The bullocks mean. while, having eaten their fill, returned and lay down to rest beside the gentle saint. The poor owner searched for the beasts the whole night through, and was enraged on returning next morning to find where they were, for it seemed to him a plot to steal the animals; so he seized their halter and began to beat Mahāvira with it. For. tunately the god Indra knew what was happening and interfered in time to stop such sacrilege; but he begged Mahāvīra to allow him in future to guard him himself, or to appoint some other god to do so. The saint, however, refused any protection, saying that, just as a Tirthankara must always obtain omniscience by his own unaided efforts, so must he attain Mokşa unprotected by any one. But the gods had grown nervous lest Mahāvira should be killed inadvertently, so Indra, without the saint's knowledge, appointed one Siddhārtha (a cousin of Mahāvīra's who had become a god) to protect him.
Enlightenment and Death. How
We have seen that Mahāvira was born with three degrees Mahāvīra of knowledge and had acquired the fourth. He was now, attained Omnia at the end of his twelve years of wandering and penance, science. to acquire the fifth degree-Kevala jñāna or Omniscience.
to In the thirteenth year after his renunciation of the world and initiation as an ascetic, Mahāvīra stayed in a place not very far from the Pärasnāth hills called Jsimbhakagrāma. There was a field there belonging to a farmer
· Also called Jțiinbhilā or Srimbhikagrāma.
