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Pārsvanātha and Vardhamana Mahāvīra
which constituted so large a part of the Brāhmanic ritual, and even denied the existence of God, and consequently, the efficacy of divine grace.116
The Jaina Anga texts reveal the existence of a number of wandering communities, the members of which entered monkhood and gave up all contact with society. 117 The existence of these communities is corroborated by the oldest Buddhist texts, the accounts of Megasthenes and the edicts of Asoka. 118 Among all the wandering communities, a place of prominence was attributed to a class of wandering mendicants called sramanas.119 The śramaņas like other wandering communities gave up worldly life; they led a wandering life and stayed at one place only in the rainy season. 120 They maintained themselves by begging food, avoided injury to living beings and did not acknowledge caste barriers. 121 They declared that right conduct was the way to get out of the meshes of karma and saṁsāra, and that right conduct also included the practice of ahiṁsā.122 We have already stated that Pārsvanātha had established a four-fold order of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen, and many ascetics belonging to his order were active in the time of Mahāvīra also. The life and teachings of Mahāvīra should be viewed in the light of these developments.
Life of Vardhamana Mahāvīra
Some authentic facts of Mahāvīra's life can be collected from the ArdhaMāgadhi canon, i.e., Ācārānga, Bhagavatī and Kalpasūtra.123 The oldest existing biography of Mahāvira is embodied in the Kalpasūtra 124 The Jaina
116. AAHI, p. 84. 117. HJM, p. 44. 118. Ibid., pp. 44-5. 119. Ibid., p. 45. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid. 122. AAHI, p. 84. 123. AOIU, p. 413. 124. CHI, I, p. 156.
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