________________
OTUIER TIRTHANKARS.
99
office himself. Rishabha was the first king, the first mendicant, the first Jina, and the first Tirthankar. He spent two hundred thousand years, in the state of youth, reigned six hundred and thirty thousand; for one thousand years he remained an ascetic imperfectly enlightened ; in all he lived eight hundred and forty thousand ye::s*.
* In some copies there are similar extravagant histories of all the Tirthankars, but not in the best inanuscripts. I am inclined to think that the original work ended with the life of Mahávíra. The Annotator in his Preface speaks only of the times of Mahávíra and Rishabha; and even the latter would seem added by a modern hand, unless it be that unrestrained by traditions transmitted to posterity, of the age and actions of the first Tirthankar, the author indulged his fancy in a way that he darst not do with the more recent sage. The few particulars we have of the other Tirthankars are most likely mere fictions, founded on no solid traditions. The only three historical characters I conceive to be, Rishabla, who practised austerities in very ancient times, which the Jains in after ages imitatod ; Pársvanáth, the real founder of the Sect, and Mabávíra, who carried its principles out to their utmost limits.
