Jinamanjari 1999 09 No 20

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

Page 12

- Historic (c. 1400 - 600 B.C.E.), Nemi to Mahāvīra.6
Therefore, twenty-two Tirthankaras belong to the ancient non-Aryan and semi-mythical Solar Dynasty from which Rāma [of the Rāmāyana fame] is supposed to have descended and the other two belonged to the Hari clan.7
Mahāvīra occupies an important place in the history of ancient subcontinent of India. As a literary tradition, this heritage obviously occurs prior to the Common Era, and we have a great deal of 8 information that is both useful and informative. For example, J.P. Jain points out that "historically the period from circa 1400 to 600 B.C.E. designated as the Later Vedic [period] is synchronized by a great revival of Śramanism and a consequent decline in Brahmanical Vedic traditions.9
Interestingly, Mahāvīra, in contrast to his contemporary Gautama Buddha, is never declared to have received through his enlightenment the understanding of any new philosophical principle or any special insight not already familiar to his period. He was not the founder of a new ascetic community, but the reformer of an old one. He was not a teacher of a new doctrine, but is represented as having gained at the time of his illumination the perfect knowledge of something which both he and his community had only been partially 10
aware.
Some 2600 years ago the intellectual renaissance of the Indian subcontinent was involved in a further journey into the investigation of cosmological and sociologic aspects of life and the living. It is noted that the currents of thought were revolutionary in relation to the prevailing metaphysical and social conditions. It was during this period of upheaval that Mahāvīra was born on the 13th day of the bright half of Caitra corresponding to 30 March in the year 599 B.C.E, His place of birth was in Kundagrāma near Vaiśali the Capital of the Lichchhavis now Basarh (some twenty-seven miles north of Patna) in Vaisali district of northern Bihar state. His father Siddhartha was the chief of the Jñatri-kula which was one of the eight clans forming the Vajji Confederacy, a republican system of governance. His mother Trishalā was the daughter of Cetaka, the head of the Vajjis Confederation. Siddhartha and Trishala were both pious Jainas and, according to tradition, followers of Pārsva.
In his thirtieth year, Mahāvīra was initiated to the mendicant life with the usual Jaina rites (the 10th day of Margaṣira, corresponding
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