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Lord Mahavira teachings and inventions. Rishabha lived two million years as a prince and six millions as a king; he was the first kind, the first Jina, the first Tîrthankara, and he also has the title Adhinatha, the “first protector'. For the benefit of his people he taught the seventytwo sciences, of which is the first and arithmetic the most important the hundred arts and the knowledge of omens. He taught men agriculture and trade, as well as the arts of painting, pottery, smithery and weaving; and he taught women dancing, singing, and the arts of love, which commentators on the sutras given in detail comparable to the Hindu Kama Sutra.
Rishabha is mentioned in some Hindu texts. The Vishnu Purana says that he was a magnanimous king who, having ruled in equity and celebrated many sacrifices, adopted the life of an anchorite until emaciated by his austerities he put a pebble in his mouth, and naked went the way of all flesh. The Bhagavata Purana with more sectarian prejudice says that Rishabha will wander about naked in the dark Kali age so that men in great numbers will desert the proper rituals, revile Brahmins and the Vedas, and worship some of the Jain Arhats as divinites.
• Twenty-three Jinas follow Rishabha in Jain tradition, and their names and details are recorded in the texts: their fathers and mothers, birthplaces, heights, colours, ages, emblems, places of Nirvana, and the interval elapsing before the next Jina. Like the successive Buddhas, they are much of a muchness.
Heinrich Zimmer, in his study of the ‘Philosophies of India', gave special attention to Parsva, the last Jina before Mahâvîra. Since he lived a modest two hundred and fifty years before Mahâvîra, and died at the age of a hundred, it is reasonable to suppose that Parsva may have been a historical personage. If traditional dating is accepted then he attained Nirvana in 772 B.C. But the story of his life, apart from different parentage, is too closely modelled on that of Mahâvîra to detain us here. As with the Buddhas, it is the life of the last in the series that serves as a model for the predecessors and has the most likelihood of containing historical elements.
The life of Mahâvîra is sketched in the Achara-anga Sutra, the first of the Angas, the sacred books of the Svetambara Jains, and in more detail in the later Kalpa Sutra. Mahâvîra came down from the great Vimana heaven, which is like the lotus among
