Heart of Jainism

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

Page 67

THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA
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but that everywhere he went he was accompanied by all the monks and nuns who had entered his order (eventually these amounted to fourteen thousand persons), and that magnificent halls of audience were erected for him to preach in. He preached in a language which they call An-akşarī, which was unintelligible to the common people, so Gautama acted as his interpreter and translated all he said into Māgadhi.
According to the Digambara again, the place Mahāvīra loved best of all was Rājagriha, the capital of Magadha. Its king Śreņika, with his whole army, had gone out to do honour to the saint on his first entry into the country and had been won over by him. The king asked sixty thousand questions concerning the faith, and all of them being satisfactorily answered by Gautama, he entered the order and became one of the staunchest champions of Jainism.
The Svetāmbara have recorded the names of the places where Mahāvira stayed during each rainy season, and they cover a period of forty-one years. First, they say, he went to Asthikagrāma (the village of bones). The name of this village, the commentators declare, was originally Vardhamāna (the Kāțhiāwād Jaina believe it to have been identical with the modern Wadhwān); but an evil demon, Yakşa, collected there an enormous heap of bones belonging to all the people he had killed, and on this heap the inhabitants built a temple, hence the change of name.
Mahāvira then spent three rainy seasons in Campā and Priștičampā (Bihār). As a prophet he cannot have been without honour in his own country, for he spent twelve monsoons at Vaiśāli and its suburb Vāņijyagrāma, doubtless recruiting for his order, which, having at its head the brother of their king, naturally held out many attractions to the inhabitants. He was also able to win over all the members of the order of Pārsvanātha to which he had originally belonged. He paid even more visits to Rājagriha,