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Lord Mahavira characteristic of him can clearly be demonstrated. In this connection we have to mention the similes. We have a large quantity of them in the Than esp. in Thana. In them Mahâvîra renders proof of his extensive practical experience and of both his profound knowledge of the world and of human nature, and had they been handed down to us in an oratorical form, the Coner of the Jains would certainly not be inferior to that of the Buddhists aesthetically.
Even individual traits borrowed from nature have been incorporated into the total conception by Mahâvîra, the systematizer, as is shown by many passages of the Viy. Thus his explanation for a hot spring he must have visited near Rajagriha, his theory of the wind, and the life-community of fire and wind. The fact that the movement of a flying object flows down (Viy, 176B; Jiv. 3746) was probably concluded by Mahâvîra from the effect of gravitation. Nor should we omit the wind kavvadaya (Viy. 4996) arising between the heart and the liver and causing writers a galoping horse the sound of khu-khu. Above all, however, the most versatile thinker we know of in ancient India had a liking for figure and arithmetic, that characterizes his speeches most extraordinarily. In most cases we are not able to prove which considerations are his own and which are of others, but he calls himself the author of a theory of the > possible lines (evam khain, Goyama mac salta sedhia pamattao, Viy, 954b). Acc. to Viy. 866 b such a line is either straight (ujjay'- ayaya) has I break (egaovamko), 2 breaks (duhao-V), forms an open rectangle on one side (egao-khata) form a rectangular 2 (duhao-ku.), is circular (cakkavata) or semicircular (addha-c). As a general principal there is neither a beginning nor an end to a line, whereas either is the case within the world since the world is finite. In the infinite nonworld this applies to the tangential straight lines that touches a border plane of the world. A line leading from the non-world and meeting with the world border has no beginning, a line leading from the latter into the non-world is without an end, and a line leading all around the world in one way or other has neither beginning nor end (Viy. 866 a with comm.).
As to geometrical forms (samthana)- to add them in this connexion Viy. 860a refers to orbicular (vatta), triangular, rectangular, elongated ones (ayaya), and to the ring (parimamdala), and in their the atoms are arranged either two-or
