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Pārsvanātha and Vardhamāna Mahāvīra
preserved a ballad, 167 which gives an account of the years during which Mahāvīra led the life of hardest asceticism and prepared himself for the attainment of highest spiritual knowledge.168 This fine ballad gives us a beautiful picture of the way in which Mahāvīra peformed his meditation and spent his time in austerities, and also of rough treatment he received from unfriendly people. 169
Mahāvīra left his home at the beginning of winter; this shows his inclination towards severe asceticism.170 Thirteen months later, also in winter, he abandoned his clothing and began to wander as a naked monk. 171 In this period his thought matured. 172 He attributed life (jīva) not only to animals and plants, but also to material objects like earth and water; assumed the real cause of worldly misery to be karma, engendered by indulgence in sensual pleasure, and the essential misery of life to be due to the endless cycle of birth and death.173 His own behaviour furnished an example to be followed by monks in their religious life.174 This ballad also suggests that after a period of two years and two months he decided on a wandering mode of existence which lasted twelve years. 175
For half of this period Mahāvīra lived with a mendicant friar named Gosāla, who subsequently left him and became the head of the Ajīvika sect.176 The Jaina tradition tells us that Mahāvīra was born with three types of knowledge and acquired the fourth at the beginning of his monkhood.177 In the
167. This ballad has been translated in Sacred Books of the East (SBE), vol. XXII, pp. 79 ff. 168. CHI, I, p. 158. 169. AOIU, pp. 413-14. 170. Ibid., p. 413. 171. Ibid. 172. Ibid. 173. Ibid., p. 414. 174. Ibid. 175. Ibid.; CHI, I, pp. 158-9; AAHI, p. 85. 176. Ibid., pp. 414-15; Ibid.; Ibid. 177. Ibid., p. 414.
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