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272: JAINS TODAY IN THE WORLD
"The Arhat Pārśva had an excellent community of sixteen thousand "śramaņa" with Aryadatta at their head; thirty-eight thousand nuns with Puşpacūlā at their head; one hundred and sixty-four thousand lay votaries with Suvrata at their head; three hundred and twenty-seven thousand females lay votaries with Sunandā at their head; three hundred and fifty sages who knew the fourteen "Pūrva”; fourteen hundred sages who were possessed of the “avadhi” knowledge (clairvoyance); one thousand “kevalin”; eleven hundred sages who could transform themselves, six hundred sages of correct knowledge, one thousand male and two thousand female disciples who had reached perfection, seven hundred and fifty sages of vast intellect, six hundred professors, and twelve hundred sages in their last birth.
"The Arhat Pārsva, the people's favourite, instituted two epochs in his capacity of a Maker of and end: the epoch relating to generations and the epoch relating to psychical condition; the former ended in the fourth generation, the latter in the third year of his “kevaliship".
"In that period, in that age, the Arhat Pārsva, the people's favourite, lived thirty years as a householder, eighty-three days in a state inferior to perfection, a little less than seventy years as a “kevalin”, a full seventy years as a “Sramaņa" and a hundred years on the whole.
"When his fourfold “karma” was exhausted and in this “avasarpiņi" era the greater part of the “duşamā-sușama" period (of mixed sufferings and good luck) had elapsed, in the first month of the rainy season, in the second fortnight, the light fortnight, of “Śrāvaņa” (July/August), on its eighth day, in the early part of the day when the moon was in conjunction with the asterism Vişākhā, Pārśva, after fasting a month without drinking water, on the summit of Mount Sammeta, in the company of eighty-three persons, stretching out his hands, died, freed of all pains”.
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