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18
MAHÂVÎRA AS THE IDEAL TEACHER OF THE JAINAS*
- Amulyachandra Sen
To the members of any religious Order, the Founder always remains the ideal in all matters. To the Jainas to whom study and teaching of their sacred scriptures are such important duties, Mahâvîra is, therefore, naturally the ideal teacher. The sacred scriptures of the Jainas, unlike those of the Buddhists, contain but little information on the personal and human aspects of the Founder of the Order. But from the scanty details available here and there in the canon on the personal characteristics of Mahâvîra, given wholly casually and incidentally and not intentionally, it would not be without interest to attempt to reconstruct, although mainly based inference, a picture of Mahâvîra as a teacher, as he appeared to his contemporaries.
In the canon, more particularly in the Viyahapannatti, the fifth anga commonly known as the Bhagavati, we come across an enormously large number of questions? put to Mahâvîra by various people, which he answered. This suggests that his sermons and discourses were of such a nature as encouraged and stimulated questioning. He was surely not averse to answering questions; on the contrary he must have readily answered them. Though questions of a trivial nature were put to him as a trap by sceptics or adversaries, he appears to have had the skill to parry them off, occasionally with a touch of wit.
For instance, being questioned by Somila, a Brahmana, whether he regarded Sarisava as edible, Mahâvîra replied that he could certainly not use "people of the same age" in that manner
* Bharatiya Vidya Vol. 3, Part-I, November, 1941.
