Heart of Jainism

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

Page 69

THE LIFE OF MAHĀVIRA
43
He died in his seventy-second year, some fifty years before The his rival and contemporary Buddha.1 Modern research has death of
? Mahāshown that the traditional dates for his birth and death, 2 vira. 599 B.C. and 527 B.C., cannot be far wrong.
Mahāvīra's last rainy season was spent in Pāpā, the modern Pāvāpuri, a small village in the Patna district which is still held sacred by the Jaina. The king of Pāpā, Hastipāla, was a patron of Mahāvira's, and, according to some accounts, it was in his office of the writers' that the saint died. Sitting in the Samparyanka position, he delivered the fifty-five lectures that explain the results of karma and recited the thirty-six unasked questions (i.e. the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra), and having finished his great lecture on Marudeva he died all alone, and cut asunder the ties of birth, old age and death.3
Legends have gathered as thickly round Mahāvira's death as round his birth. One tells how nearly all the ruling chiefs of the country had gathered to hear his dis. courses, and how the saint preached to them with wonder. ful eloquence for six days; then on the seventh he took his seat upon a diamond throne in the centre of a magnificent hall, which had been specially built for him on the borders of a lake. His hearers had arranged themselves into twelve grades according to their rank, for all were there from the king to the beggar. It was a dark night, but the hall was brilliantly illumined by the supernatural glow that issued from the gods who had come to listen to the illustrious preacher. Mahāvīra preached all night, and towards dawn his hearers fell asleep. The saint knew by his Sukladhyāna that his end was drawing nigh, so he sat reverently with clasped hands and crossed knees (the Samparyanka position), and, just as the morning dawned,
1 Hoernle, A.S.B., p. 42. Buddha's dates are 557-477 B.C.
The word the Jaina prefer to use instead of Death is Mrityu Mahotsava or Great Death Festival.
Kalpa Sutra, S.B.E., xxii, p. 264 ff.