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Jinas and Avtars
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flowers and like the swastika among celestial regions. He had lived there many years till the end of his alloted existence among the gods. He knew that he was to descend, and that he had descended, but he knew not as a child when he was descending. His father was a Brahmin named Rishabha-datta ('gift of Rishabha'), and his mother Devananda ('divine bliss'). Mahâvîra entered as an embryo into her womb, when the stars were in an auspicious conjunction. His mother saw fourteen lucky signs in her dream, and when she woke up she asked her husband what they could portend. He determined that she would bear a son, after nine months and seven and a half days. He would be a lovely boy, and would know the four Vedas and the Angas. The mother-tobe accepted this, and with her husband enjoyed 'the noble permitted pleasures of human nature'. So there is no virgin birth, immaculate conception, or aversion to sensual pleasure.4
Then comes a strange interlude. Sakra (Indra), the chief of the gods, was 'enjoying the permitted pleasure of divine nature, under the great din of uninterrupted story-telling', and looking down on the continent of India he saw Mahâvîra taking the form of an embryo in the womb of Devananda.
The god rose up hastily in confusion, took off his shoes, threw his seamless robe over his left shoulder, and knelt on his right knee before the Jina. He revered the Tîrthankaras, the lights of the world, the givers of life and knowledge, the liberated liberators, who have reached Nirvana, and Mahâvîra the last of them who was predicted by the former Tirthankaras. Sakra thought that Arhats should not be born in low or poor or Brahminical families, but in noble families like those of Ikshvaku or Hari (names found in the Gita). So he sent a soldier to remove the embryo and place it in the womb of a Kshatriya woman called Trisala, wife of Siddhartha (also the name of Gauttama Buddha). This was done while both women were asleep, unclean particles were removed, and the embryo was carried in the soldier's hands without harm. This curious story gives preference to the Kshatriyas over Brahmins, for both the Buddha and Mahâvîra were Kshatriyas who had numerous disputes, with the Hindu Brahmins. Some writers, like Zimmer, think that both Jainism and Buddhism represent a resurgence of old non-Aryan religioun. But it will be remembered that later Krishna stories said that the baby was On Viteco
