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The Fordmakers
283 It is possible to interpret this event in two ways. Firstly, the account in the Kalpasutra would appear to represent an attempt to devalorise the authority of the brahman caste which ranked itself hierarchically above the warrior caste into which all the fordmakers are born. Devananda's husband is depicted as somewhat vaingloriously rejoicing in the fact that his son, after being born, will master the Veda, a type of learning which Jainism rejected as being worthless. Indra, however, assumes control over the destination of the embryo since he knows that fordmakers can never be born into three types of low family, those of the poor, the insignificant or brahmans."
Secondly, a comparison with the unusual births associated with hero figures of other religious traditions, such as the Buddha who was born from his mother's thigh or Jesus whose mother was a virgin, might suggest a desire to present Mahâvîra through his anomalous arrival in his final birth as both human and at the same time transcending the normal mortal state. Mahâuîra's Asceticism
In the fully developed biography of Mahâvîra, much stress is placed on his pre-enlightenment career as a wandering ascetic, with relatively little being said about events between his enlightenment and his death. The core of this account, and the earliest version of any part of Mahâuîra's life, occurs in the eighth chapter of the first book of the Acaranga which is known as the Pillow Scripture' (Uvahanasuya) because Mahâvîra's various religious practices supported him as a pillow does the head. Up to this point the Acaranga had been giving a general description of monastic behaviour and then proceeds to particularise its injunctions with reference to the greatest ascetic of all. This must be taken as part of a larger oral account, for it commences with a reference to Mahâuîra's refusal to cover himself with 'that garment' (AS 1.8.1.1), an allusion understandable only in the light of the description in later strata of Indra's bestowing a divine robe upon him at the time of renunciation.
The 'Pillow Scripture' is concerned not so much with Mahâvîra's decision to reject the world as with the harshness and mortifying nature of the life which he led as a consequence of this. The violence shown to him by householders as he wandered,
