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The Fordmakers
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careers of these fordmakers is essentially identical. Always born into a family of the warrior class, they are generally awakened by the gods (in Jainism, beings who are subject like humans to the laws of rebirth but who cannot attain enlightenment in their divine state) to their destinies as great spiritual teachers and then renounce the world of the householder to become wandering mendicants. After an obligatory period in the practice of physical and mental austerities, facilitated by their uniquely powerful physical structure, to burn away the karma they have accumulated over innumerable existences, they attain the enlightenment which the Jains define as full omniscience. Finally, having engaged in a period of preaching and conversion, they die in meditation and their souls, freed from their bodies, travel to the top of the universe to abide in a state of bliss and pure consciousness along with the other liberated souls.
One important way in which the fordmakers are differentiated from each other is in their physical dimensions and length of life. 12 At the outset of the avasarpini they are massive in size and live for near incalculable periods of time. However, as the spokes of the wheel descend, the intervals between the fordmakers decrease, and their size and duration of life diminish until finally the twenty-third fordmaker Parshva (who traditionally lived for a hundred years) is separated from his successor Mahâvîra by only two hundred and fifty years and their size and duration of life are of near-normal human dimensions.
As the first fordmaker, Rishabha is inevitably allotted a great deal of space in the Universal History. He was born not as would be expected at the beginning of the avasarpini but near the end of the third spoke. Up to this point the needs of human beings had been satisfied by miraculous wishing trees but, as the efficacy of these decreased, society became unstructured and incapable of self-maintenance. One of Rishabha's roles prior to his renunciation of the world was the patriarchal one of inculcating social skills such as the preparation of food, the kindling of fire, agriculture, writing, marriage, an organised system of society and so on. The nature of the vital institution of giving (dana), whereby a layman gives alms to an ascetic and through that action gains merit, was articulated for the first time when a king, Shreyamsa, poured sugarcane juice into Rishabha's cupped hands to break the
