Jain Journal 1970 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 36

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JAIN JOURNAL
Here is another episode. His cousin Krisna was also of superhuman strength, and was able to blow a large conch from which it was believed no other person could produce a blast. One day Nemi saw it lying on the ground, and asking why that toy was lying there, he took, it up and blew such a blast upon it as quite alarmed Krisna ; who began to enquire who it was that could blow upon his conch. On finding his cousin, he became jealous of him as a rival, and accordingly directed his hundred gopis to excite amorous thoughts in Neminatha and shame him into marriage, thinking this the only way to put down his strength. The gopis began to tease him and tell him as he was grown up to manhood he ought to marry. At first he refused, but after a deal of reviling and reproaching he consented, and Krisna selected for him Rajimati the daughter of Ugrasena of Girnar. When the wedding day came and Neminatha approached Junagadh, he saw a flock of sheep and herds of cattle collected to be sacrificed for the people that had assembled to celebrate the wedding : the sheep were bleating piteously, and, struck with pity for them and the vanity of human happiness, and to save the lives of so many animals, he resolved to become an ascetic, gave up the world and retired into the Girnar hills. Rajimati also renounced the world.
Risabhanatha
Risabha was a Kosalan Kşatriya of the Kasyapa gotra. He was born at Vinata (modern Ayodhya) towards the end of the period of Yugalins. His father's name was Navi and mother's Maru. He bore the five epithets representing him as Risabha, the first king, the first mendicant, the first Jina, and the first Tirthankara.
As the wish-yielding (kalpa-vşkşa) trees began to disappear, people became very much quarrelsome and lost respect for one another. So they elected Risabha as their king. Thus he became the first king. It was he who, again, first taught men and women different arts and industries. He taught seventy-two sciences of which writing was the first, arithmetic the most important, and the knowledge of omens the last, the sixty-four accomplishments of women, hundred arts and three occupations of men. The arts as those of potter, blacksmith, painter, weaver and barbar, (each of the five principal arts was subdivided into twenty branches,) were taught while the occupations such as agriculture, trade etc., developed everywhere. Dancing, singing, music, etc., were the accomplishments of women.