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9
THE GREAT HERO*
-A. C. Bouquet
Vardhamana (C.599 to 529 B.C.), a Kshatriya, hardly seems to have been the founder of Jainism but rather the author of a successful revival of a movement which had begun some 250 years earlier. Of the real founder, Parsva, almost nothing is known, but he may well have been an extreme ascetic, since the parents, of Vardhamana are said to have been disciples of his sect, and they, when their son was thirty-one years of age, decided to engage in a “fast unto death”, a practice which has been characteristic of Jain zealots.
After the voluntary decease of his father and mother, Vardhamana renounced the world and the wearing of clothes, and wandered about in Bengal like Solomon Eagle in the City of London in the reign of Charles II, performing austerities and enduring persecutions.
Thirteen years later, he declared that he had gained enlightenment or samadhi, and became the head of a group of devotees, calling himself jina of Jaina (i.e., one who has attained freedom from bondage—“the victorious one”).
His followers referred to him not by his personal name but as Mahâvîra, which means "the great hero” (rather as Italians would have spoken of "the Duce").
Jains are keen educationalists and are also successful in business. The standard of literacy among them is high, and their moral code elevated. They tend to amass fortunes which they spent until recently on elegant temples, but now employ more on building and maintaining schools, and also hospitals for sick animals.
* Ed. by Akshaya Kumar Jain, Lord Mahâvîra in the eyes of foreigners, Meena
Bharati, New Delhi.
