Jain Journal 1973 04

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

Page 39

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JAIN JOURNAL
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of thirteen hundred Avadhi-jnani monks who were masters of avadhi knowledge and had attained the highest limit of it (i.e., only slightly less than omniscience). 139
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of seven hundred Kevala-jnani monks who were masters of supreme and absolute knowledge and faith. 140
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of seven hundred Vejuviya monks who were great masters in the art to tra themselves, and even though not gods themselves, they were possessed of the ddhi (power) of gods. 141
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of five hundred Vipula-mati monks who were endowed with the mightiest of intellectual power, who knew the inner thoughts of all the living who had full development of mind and five organs of senses and who resided in two islands and a half and in two oceans. 142
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of four hundred Vadis (scholars) who were invincible in argument in the assembly of gods, Asuras and human beings. 143
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of seven hundred disciples, who were perfected, ... till ended all misery, and a similar community of fourteen hundred perfected female disciples. 144
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had an excellent community of eight hundred Anuttarapapatika monks who were in their last birth, who had bliss in their life, who had bliss in their movement, and who were lucky as regards their future. They were in possession of excellent allotments in the very highest of celestial abodes like Vijaya and others. 145
Sramana Bhagavan Mahavira had instituted two epochs marking the end, which were as follows.: epoch signifying the termination of a generation, and epoch signifying the termination of categories ; ... till the third generation, the epoch terminating generation, and till four years from the time of his attainment of supreme knowledge, the epoch terminating categories. 146*
**The meaning of this rather dark passage is according to the commentary that after three generations of disciples (Vira, Sudharma, Jambusvami) nobody reached nirvana : and after the fourth year of Mahavira's kevali-ship nobody entered the path which ends in final liberation, so that all persons who before that moment had not advanced in the way to final liberation, will not reach that state, though they may obtain the kevalam by their austerities and exemplary conduct."
---Footnote in Hermann Jacobi's translation of Kalpa Sutra in Sacred Books of the East, vol. 22, Part 1. P. 269.