Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 78

that performed the function of proclaiming great truths, including the advent of a Great God.
That Adinatha alias Rsabhadeva founded a new order of faith in a spirit of protest against Vedic sacrifice and injury to animals. Subsequently the followers of Adinatha, the tirthankaras and siddhas, put his faith on a firm wheel the wheel of ahimsa and set it moving into time and space, gaining strength like electric coils which supercharged the atmosphere with the reverberation, ahimsa parmo-dharma.
Nudity of Rsabha is a point too well-known to be disputed and it is considered as a factor of holiness in the Jaina creed. If the Rg Veda seeks the help of Indra, one of the Vedic gods, for protection of Vedic sacrifices from Sisna Devas (the naked gods), it is obvious that the Rg Veda is only chronicling a fact of history: the origin of Jainism as envisioned by Rsabha, who did usher in an ending of animal sacrifices that were associated with the Vedic yajnas. To win the confidence and convince humanity of the loftiness of his mission, the first tirthankara threw away all clothing exposing himself and his followers to the lime-light of self-sacrifice and physical sacrifice (kayotsarga). This delightful message has been imaged in Indian art, and Harappan statuette is a splendid representative specimen of the Jaina thought perhaps at its very inception.□
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