Lord Mahavira

Author(s): Boolchand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

Page 68

ENUNCIATION OF THE TRUTH
Mahavird's Teachings.
The teachings of Mahavira have come down to us as a living tradition which grew up and took a complete literary form through ten centuries from his demise. The original doctrine was contained in the Purvas of which there were fourteen, which Mahavira himself taught to his disciples. The fourteen Purvas were presumably preceded by the existence of ten Purvas, which had embodied the religious traditions of Parsva and which formed, as we are led to believe by a legend mentioned in the Bhagawati, a common basis of the Jain and Ajivaka canons. The knowledge of the Purvas was gradually lost till it became totally extinct. Only one of the Mahavira's disciples, Arya Sudharma, handed them down, and they were preserved during six generations more. In the second century after Mahavira's death there was a terrible famine in the land of Magadha, which lasted for twelve years. Bhadrabahu was then the head of the Jain Sangha. There is a legend which connects this Bhadrabahu with the Emperor Chandra Gupta Maurya and says that owing to the famine Bhadrabahu emigrated with a host of his disciples including Chandragupta himself to Karnataka in South India. This is clearly unwarranted by the chronology of the event. When the famine took place, Bhadrabahu took recourse to the neighbouring Nepal hills and there started his sadhana. During the absence of Bhadrabahu it became evident that the knowledge of the sacred texts was threatening to lapse into oblivion ; and so a Council was called at Pataliputra to compile a recension of the canon. The Jain belief is that the Tirthankara himself taught the Purvas to his disciples, the Ganadharas, and the Ganadharas then composed