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LIFE OF MAHÁVÍRA.
only four years*. The venerable ascetic Mahávíra lived thirty years as a householder, and then twelve years and six months and a full half month more a sage only in outward guiset; thirty years less six and a holy month in the exercise of perfect wisdom, altogether having lived seventy-two years. At that time the four Karans of this Avasarpiní, i.e., Vedani, Ayu, Náma, and Gotra, were finished, and the fourth Ara, called Dukhamasukhama, had all expired except three years, and eight and a half months, in the city of Pápa (Mag. Páwa), alone without a companion, performing the fast in which abstinence is kept up for three full days and nights, without even tasting water, under the constellation Sváti, at a fortunate conjunction of the moon, in the morning, the lord sat down upon his lotus seat, while the public reading of the fifty-fifth lesson, which speaks of the fruits of righteousness and of sin, was going on. At that time repeating without a prompter the sixty-sixth, called the chief lesson, he obtained emancipation, and entered on a state of freedom from passion, and absence of pain. After nine hundred years from his departure had elapsed, and in the eightieth year of the
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*These refer to peculiar spiritual privileges possessed by certain disciples for this period.
+ Chhadmastha, that is, an ascetic, not yet possessed of perfect knowledge.
