Lord Mahavira

Author(s): Bool Chand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

Page 35

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republics, including the Videhas, the Jõātškas, the Lichchavis and the Vajjis, were constituent units. The real strength of the republic:in . Mahavira's time as, to a large extent, today lay not so much in its government as in the character of its people. The Buddha men tioned in one of his discourses that republican population was free from luxury and sloth, 'sleeping on logs of wood as pillows and not on cushions of the finest cotton, active in archery, and not delicate, tender and soft in their arms and legs.' The youths were rowdy, but by no means, devoid of honour or lacking in moral courage ; they frankly admitted their mistakes, and were inspired by a fundamental sense of respect for elders and women, and their national institutions. It was in this atmosphere that Mahavira's early life was spent. His upbringing must have been quite exceptionally balanced and his development proportionate, for his life was a life of comfort but not luxury, and his ambition was an ambition to conquer but not with a view to mastery over others. He was deeply influenced by the democratic ethos of the society in which he lived. He was impressed by the inadequate appli'cation of this ethos in the political, economic and social life of the community without its being based upon a really democratic religious system'; and he took it upon himself to work out and propagate a system of complete spiritual democracy in the form of Jainism.