Jain Journal 1972 01

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

Page 21

JANUARY, 1972
101
simultaneously prophesied his becoming a Tirthankara like himself, immediately on his release from hell.
It has been mentioned in the Buddhist work Mahāvamsa, 32 that the Buddha was five years older than Bimbisara. Bimbisara ascended the throne at the age of fifteen and reigned for fifty-two years. The Buddha attained the enlightenment at the age of thirty-five and Bimbisara sought refuge in the Buddha and his religion in the 16th year of his reign and the 31st year of his life. Thus he lived for 37 years in the presence of enlightened Buddha, while the Buddha attained the nirvāṇa eight years after Ajatasatru's accession to throne. But this information furnished by Mahāvamsa is not consistent with the facts described in the Tripitakas. 33
One more evidence of Srenika's staunchness in the Nirgrantha religion is that the number of initiations of his queens and princesses in the Buddhist order is quite negligible compared to that in the Jaina order.
• We also find evidence of Srenika being a Jaina hereditarily. His father is said to have faith (samyaktva) in the religion of Parsva and accepted the lay-disciple's Vows (aņuvratas).34 According to
32 Ch. II, vv. 26-32. 33 For the detailed discussion of the discrepancies in the Chronology of
Mahavamsa, see, author's Contemporaneity and Chronology of Mahavira and the Buddha, pp. 108-15. For example, take the belief that the Buddha attained the nirvana in the eighth year of Ajatasatru's reign. But the events of the life of the Buddha, as described in the Tripitakas, clearly imply that Ajatasatru's accession had already taken place during the first twenty years of the Buddha's life after his enlightenment. It means that the Buddha must have lived at least for another twenty-five years after the accession of Ajatasatru. For according to the Samannyaphala Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, Ajatasatru (king of Magadha) only once called on the Buddha (Cf. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 88) during a "rainy season" passed in Rajagrha. However, the Atthakatha of the Anguttara Nikaya tells us that the Buddha passed only the second, third, fourth, seventeenth and twentieth "rainy seasons", after the enlightenment, at Rajagrha. Of the forty-six “rainy seasons", the remaining twenty-five were spent at Sravasti and the last at Vaisali. Then, how is it possible that Ajatasatru's accession took place only seven or eight years before the Buddha's nirvana and that he met the Buddha only seven or eight years before his nirvana.
srimatparsvajinadhisa - sasanamhojasat padah samyagdarsana - punyatma, so(a)nuvratadharobhavat
-Trisastisalakapurusacaritram, book 10, canto 6, v. 8.