Jainism

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

Page 20

JAINISM
5
Buddha; but He was the last of a great succession, and simply gave to Jainism its latest form. I said there were great cycles of time believed in by the Jaina as by the Hindu; and we find that in each vast cycle — which resembles the day and night of Brahma – twenty-four great Prophets come to the world, somewhat, though not entirely, of the nature of Avatāras. They always climb up from manhood. While, in some cases, the Hindu is loath to admit that an Avatāra is a perfected man, the Jaina has no doubt at all on this point. His twenty-four great Teachers, the Tirthamkaras, as they are called, these are perfected men. To them he gives the many names that you will find applied in Buddhism in somewhat different senses. He speaks of them as Arhats, as Buddhas, as Tathagatas, and so on, but above all as Jinas. The Jina is the conqueror, the man made perfect, who has conquered his lower nature, who has reached divinity, in whom the Jiva asserts his supreme and perfected powers: he is the Ishvara, from the Jaina point of view.
Twenty-four of these appear in each great cycle, and, if you take the Kalpa Sūtra of the