________________
TIRTHANKARAS WERE REVOLUTIONARIES
1108 11.
88/10
11 By :
VASANT CHINCHWADKAR
|/372all
10
.
000
te
Nesse
ole
On their wedding day, Aristanemi and Princess Rajul renounced the world to avoid
unnecessary suffering to animals being sacrificed for their feast of humankind. If some of the Vedic hymns are construed as life). To these he added commerce (vanijya), the arts (kala) references to Tirthankara Rshabha and to the renunciates in the and architecture (shilpa). He established the institution of Sramana order (Vatarasana-munis also described as Kesin), the marriage as well as villages, government, laws and Vedic and pre-Vedic antiquity of Rshabha and the Sramana
penology. He taught 72 art forms and imparted the tradition is beyond any doubt.
knowledge of scripts and numerals. In a sense, that was the Bharat, the elder son of Rshabha, was a sovereign ruler beginning of human civilisation. after whom the land around and eastwards of the river Indus After Rshabha, the founding father of the tradition and came to be known as Bharatvarsha or Bharat. The Constitution
the twenty other Tirthankaras, Aristanemi, Parsva and of India refers to India that is Bharat; perhaps it would be more Vardhamana Mahavir carried forward, refined and consolaccurate to refer to our country as Bharat that is India. King idated the Jain doctrine. Aristanemi, the twenty-second Bharat's younger brother, Bahubali was the great apostle of Tirthankara belonged to the Andhak-Vrisni clan of the renunciation. His colossal sculptural image, one of the tallest Yadavas. He was a younger cousin of Lord Krishna. His in the world, has a majestic presence in Shravana Belgola in father, Samudravijaya and Lord Krishna's father Vasudeva Karnataka.
were brothers. Their families moved from Mathura to Rshabha dates back to a pre-historic period. Legend Dwarka under the threat of annihilation by a retaliatory associates his name with the Ikshvaku dynasty of Ayodhya as attack of Jarasandha. Aristanemi grew up to be a strong and its primordial ancestor. In all probability, he lived before or handsome prince. While on his way to get married to the contemporaneously with the Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Hittite, beautiful princess Rajul (or Rajimati), Aristanemi heard the Mittani and Sumer civilisations. As noted by Pandit Sukhlal plaintive wailing of animals about to be slaughtered for the Sanghavi, during an excavation in 1949 in Cyprus a bronze banquet in celebration of his wedding. He renounced the statue of Rsabhadev was found from around the second world, became a monk and attained kaivalya. His bride-tomillennium, cca. 1250 BC. Recent marine archeology in the be also became a nun. The temples at Girnar commemorate Bay of Cambay threw up underwater discoveries of submerged the compassion and renunciation of Tirthankara civilisations that existed before almost all other known ancient Aristanemi... To be continued civilisations. The Bhagawat Purana describes Rshabha as an incarnation of Vishnu. A seal from Mohen-jo-daro is often referred to as the seal of Rsabha as well as that of Pashupati Siva. Rsabha's abode of penance is Mount Kailash, the fabled
Dr: L. M. Singhvi is a ambassador of non-violence and abode of Lord Siva.
inter-faith dialogue and a member of the advisory board of As a ruler, Rshabha encapsulated his vision of civil society
Jain Spirit. He lives in New Delhi. The above essay is in three rhyming words: asi (sword or civil defence); masi (ink, extracted from his beautiful new picture book Jain Temples representing writing or language and script) and krishi
in India and Around the World', published by Himalayan (agriculture, animal husbandry or the means to settled social Books, 2002, available from Jain Spirit at £30 + p&p.
December 2002 - February 2003. Jain Spirit
27
Jain Education Interational 2010_03
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary org
