Lord Mahavira

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

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and Kevala-darsana. Now he devoted himself to the noble task of the active propagation of the Truth and for this purpose of organising the community or Tirtha, be assumed the role of the Tirthankara.
The difference between a Tirthankara and any other Kevalin consists in just this, that the Tirthankara is master of a special Nama-Karma, which gives him a position of peculiar respect and eminence and makes him responsible for the organisation and establishment of a Sangha. Most Kevalins in the Sayogikevali stage go about preaching truth ; but it is only a Tirthankara who forms the Tirthas (or fords) by means of which a jiva can cross this samsara over to the other side (i.e., Moksha). It was in the organisation of the Jain Sangha that the Thirthankara Mahavira showed his real abilities. He welded together into the Sangha the ascetic as well as the layman, and men' as well as women, prescribed for all their respective duties, and provided for a rigid discipline and rigorous form of control. In the Buddhist Sangha laymen were not organically connected with the clergy : Buddha's church was a church of monks and nuns only and no attempt was ever made to organise a quasi-church of lay-brothers and lay-sisters, or to establish an organic relationship between the clergy and the laity. But Mahavira velded together the two sections of the Order, the clergy and the laity, and accorded to the latter a definite and honourable place in the ecclesiastical scheme and made it incumbeat upon them, both as a duty and as an act of merit, to support the clergy by giving alms liberally. As there was a de jure relationship involved in the concept of the clergy, so was a de jure relationship involved in the concept of the laity; as there was a definite procedure for the initiation of the monks and nuns, so a special procedure was prescribed for the initiation of lay disciples of the Sramanopasaka variety. Above all, the laity was enjoined to be exclusive in their loyalty and patronage. Intercourse with adherents of a rival creed was disapproved, as is clear from the following declaration