Heart of Jainism

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

Page 81

AND DISCIPLES
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tried their utmost, but, of course, the human wife could not reach so far, whereas the demon wife did and thus showed her real character. Vimaļanātha had six hundred companions to mokşa. Thirty sāgara of time had passed before his birth, and his height was sixty bow-shots.
There was an endless (ananta) thread which lay about 14. Ananquite powerless in Ayodhyā; but after the king's wife had tanātha. given birth to the fourteenth Tirthankara, it became endued with power to heal diseases; this event, combined with the fact that his mother had seen an endless necklace of pearls, decided the child's name. Anantanātha's birth was divided from his predecessor's death by nine sāgara of time, and his height was fifty bow-shots. His sign is the hawk, or, according to the Digambara, the bear.
The fifteenth Tirthankara was born four sāgara of time 15. Dharafter Anantanātha's Nirvāņa, and his height was only manātha. forty-five bow-shots. His parents were the Rajput king and queen of Ratnapuri, and before his birth they exhibited such new zeal in the performance of their religious duties (dharma), that the child was given the name of Lord of Religion, Dharmanātha. He attained mokşa with eight hundred monks. His sign is a thunderbolt.
After the nirvāņa of the ninth Tirthankara, Suvidhi: 16. Sānnātha, the Jaina faith disappeared until the birth of the tinātha. tenth Tirthankara, who revived it; on his nirvāņa it dis. appeared again, but was revived on the birth of the eleventh; and this continued to be the case until the birth of Sāns tinātha, the sixteenth Tirthankara, after which it never disappeared again. The parents of this Tirthankara ruled in Hastināpura three sāgara of time after Dharmanātha's nirvāņa. It happened that plague was raging. Before Śāntinātha's birth, however, his mother was able to stay the course of the pestilence by sprinkling the sufferers with water; so when the child was born he was called Śāntinātha, or Lord of Peace (śānti). The special interest
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