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JANUARY, 1985
07
period (combined) i.e. 2323 years, Jainism and its followers would again come into lime light.
The another story referring to this event appeared in the Treatise on Kalpa Sutra which is as under :
Indra, the king of Gods, foresighting this event rushed to Lord Mahavira on that night and humbly prayed to him that a comet Bhasma Rasi Graha with very ominous effect would be appearing on his birth nakştra at the time of his nirvāņa. To forestall the bad effect of the comet he prayed to Lord Mahavira to delay or to hasten a bit his departure. To this Lord Mahavira answered that though the Tirthankara are all powerful (omnipotent) they have no control over their death.
The version in Bank Culiā, composed by Yasobhadra Svami, was more or less the same as we have seen in Kalpa Sūtra.
Thereafter in the interval of more than 2000 years we do not find any mention of this historical event in any of the Jaina literature. While the Jaina scholars of mediaeval times (monks and others) had left no subject untouched one wonders how did this important event escaped their notice. And it is equally regretable to note that none of the modern scholars has yet focussed their attention to this.
The reference in Kalpa Sūtra and Bank Culiā clearly depicts that a comet called Bhasma Rasi Graha appeared on the night of Lord Mahavira's nirvāņa. What effect did it cast on his religion is purely a subject matter of Astrology. But our main and foremost object in this article is to find whether any comet as depicted earlier appeared on that celebrated night and if it did what was the nature of that comet.
What are the comets :
The comets are also the members of our solar family, like the sun, planets and their satellites. The planets and their satellites of our solar system are very well known to us and with the advancement of modern science and invention of sophisticated scientific instruments our knowledge about them is far more complete. Their sizes, composition, the orbits they revolve, even their day to day position in the sky are very exactly known to us, yet our knowledge about the other members of the solar family viz. comets is not so complete. The comets travel in very elongated paths (not circular as of planets) round the sun. The orbital period of the comets
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