Heart of Jainism

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

Page 66

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THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA
discipline was of supreme importance, and asceticism and austerity of no avail. Mahāvira, on the contrary, laid the greatest stress on asceticism. In its glow karma could be burnt up, and only through austerities could one become a Tirthankara.
Mahāvira's first disciple was Gautama Indrabhūti, who in turn became a Kevali, and whose story we tell later. After instructing Gautama, Mahāvira set off on his preaching tours in real earnest, and taught his Rule with great acceptance to all his warrior kinsfolk. Like Buddha, he preached first to the rich and aristocratic, and though his followers to-day are to be found more amongst the middle classes, his earliest supporters seem to have been rulers and petty kings. This may have been because they too disliked Brāhman pretensions and were pleased that one of their own kinsfolk should lead a revolt against them. Mahavira's connexions through his mother Trisalā must have been invaluable to him at the beginning of this work; indecd, Dr. Jacobi thinks that the real meaning of the story about the removal of the embryo from one mother to another was to hide the fact that Mahāvira was rcally the son of another and far less highly connected wife of the king, and to pretend that he was the son instead of the stepson of Trišalā.1 This of course the Jaina indignantly deny. The Digambara and Svetāmbara legends give the names of the different rulers Mahāvira visited, and tell how Cetaka, king of Videha, became a patron of the order, and Kuņika, king of Anga, gave him the most cordial welcome, and how, when he travelled as far as Kaušāmbi, he was received with the greatest honour by its king Satānika, who listened with deep interest to his preaching, and eventually entered his order. The Digambara claim that in thirty years he converted to Jainism Magadha, Bihār, Prayāga, Kauśāmbi, Campapuri and many other powerful states in North India. They believe that he did not travel alone,
See Introduction, S. B. E., xxii, p. xxxi.