________________
INTRODUCING JAINISM
means which they had shown to prove themselves what they were. The history of human civilization would not have been like this to-day, had not these great men left their contributions for the betterment of human beings. In fact, “No great men", says Carlyle, “lives in vain. The history of the world is but the Biographies of great men."
Such was the life and activities of Lord Vardhamāna Mahāvīra, an almost forgotten saint of India, who came to the arena of intellectual battlefield over 2600 years ago, when the majority of the world were in the infernal gloom and cimmerian darkness of colossal ignorance. He dedicated his life to the cause of mankind, consecrated the most extraordinary energies ever conferred upon a mortal, beaconed the path of human knowledge and created a new horizon in the domain of Religion and Philosophy. He is great and divine, not because he dedicated his life to the right cause of humanity, not because he had a high feeling of honour for all sorts of living beings, not because he respected the rights of conscience, but because he found the eternal truth of peace and happiness for mankind, but because all his utterances, full of wisdom, have the "trumpet of a prophecy”, but because he nobly advocated equality of privileges and the universal brotherhood of man. That is why, even after the lapse of 2600 years of ever new expansion of human ideas, we feel to remember him, to analyse his ideas and principles, to vivisect his doctrines and to resuscitate his thoughts from the pages of forgotten history.
II. Mahāvira's Brief Life-Sketch
Lord Vardhamana Mahāvīra, a contemporary of Gautama Buddha and a new interpreter of human life, was born in 599 B.C. at the site of Kundagrāma, a suburb of the town Vaisāli (the modern Basārh about 27 miles north of Patnā). His father Siddhārtha was a ruling Ksatriya ('a warrior class) in the republic of Vaiśālī in Bihār. He was born at a time when Magadha, an area in Eastern India, was, perhaps, both politically and spiritually in the height of its power. Vardhamāna seems to have lived with his parents till they died. At the age of 30 Vardhamana, with the consent of his brother Nandivardhana, entered the spiritual career. For
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
