Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 71

APRIL, 1974
209
probably somewhat older than the latter, who outlived his rival's decease at Pava.
Mahavira, however, unlike Buddha, was most probably not the founder of the sect which reveres him as their prophet, nor the author of their religion. According to the unanimous Buddhist tradition, Buddha had, under the Bodhi-tree, discovered by intuition the fundamental truths of his religion as it appears throughout his personal work ; his first sermons are things ever to be remembered by his followers, as are the doctrines which he then preached. No such traditions are preserved in the canonical books of the Jainas about Mahavira. His becoming a monk, and, some 12 years later, his attainment of omniscience (kevala), are, of course, celebrated events. But tradition is silent about his motives for renouncing the world, and about the particular truths whose discovery led to his exalted position. At any rate, Mahavira is not described by tradition as having first become a disciple of teachers whose doctrines afterwards failed to satisfy him, as we are told of Buddha ; he seems to have had no misgivings, and to have known where truth was to be had, and thus he became a Jaina monk. And again, when, after many years of austerities such as are practised by other ascetics of the Jainas, he reached omniscience, we are not given to understand that he found any new truth, or a new revelation, as Buddha is said to have received ; nor is any particular doctrine or philosophical principle mentioned, the knowledge and insight of which then occured to him for the first time. But he is represented as gaining, at his kevala, perfect knowledge of what he knew before only in part and imperfectly. Thus Mahavira appears in the tradition of his own sect as one who, from the beginning, had followed a religion established long ago ; had he been more, had he been the founder of Jainism, tradition, ever eager to extol a prophet, would not have totally repressed his claims to reverence as such. Nor do Buddhistic traditions indicate that the Niganthas owed their origin to Nataputta ; they simply speak of them as of a sect existing at the time of Buddha. We cannot, therefore, without doing violation to tradition, decalare Mahavira to have been the founder of Jainism. But he is with
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A.F.R. Hoernle, Uvasagadasao, tr., p. 5 f., note (Calcutta, 1890), says that Mahavira, having been born in Kollaga, "naturally, when he assumed the monk's vocation, retired (as related in Kalpa Sutra 115 f.) to the ceiya of his own clan, called Duipalasa and situated in the neighbourhood of Kollaga. Mahavira's parents and with them probably their whole clan of Naya Ksatriyas) are said to have been followers of the tenets of Parsvanatha (see Ayaranga, ii, 15, 16). As such they would no doubt, keep up a religious establishment (ceiya) for the accomodation of Parsva, on his periodical visits, with his disciples, to Kundapura or Vesali. Mahavira, on renouncing the world, would probably first join Parsva's sect, in which, however, he soon became a reformer and chief himself.”