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The Nativity of Mahâvîra: A Discussion
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of the mother Aditi along with the vital fluid of Kasyapa (Prajapati) when she contemplated the Almighty as centred in her husband at the time of their union.
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In the legend of the Nativity of the Jina11, we find Devananda who conceived the conqueror, was incapable for parturition. Now, what was the reason-was it because she represented the dark side of the Great Mother or Night? Was her pregnancy caused by the entry of the Saviour into her womb covertly suggested to be an unkind Mother12 and she was thus made unfit for the act of delivery? An explanation has been put forward by the myth maker by describing her a Brahmin of low social status and in the Kalpa Sutra, 19, we find Arhats, etc., in the past, present and future, descend in (i.e. take the form of an embryo in the womb of a woman belonging to) low families etc. but they are never brought forth by birth from such a womb. 13 In another Rigvedic myth, we similarly trace that Indra was conceived by an unkind mother whom Sayana describes as Rakshasi. In Rigveda14 Aditi is found to have reiterated that she is the real mother of Indra and says that 'I cast thee (Indra) from me, mine-thy youthful mother; thee mine own off spring, Kusava hath swallowed', i.e., whom Kusava hath conceived 15. The particular story which was associated with the birth of Indra appears to have been lost. the puerile ideas which produce such stories remain dormant in our sub-conscious psyche, but are occasionally found to have emerged into the conscious level under the veil of some new legends agreeable to the taste and inclination of the contemporary age. In the Christian mythology and art, Pieta, the Madonna, is represented as 'holding in her lap the dead Jesus, the child of death, who has returned to her'. 16 [pl. 2] Like Night [pl.1], she, the Eternal Mother has intaken in embryonic shape [to heaven] 'the child of death' who is stated to have been brought earlier to the womb of Mary, the temporal but benign aspect of the Madonna, to bring him forth by birth. Of course, the idea of eternal mother was denied in the male monotheistic philosophy of Christianity which turns 'the child of death' into the 'Son of God' and the Eternal Mother as the mortal woman Mary who was treated merely as receptacle of the Holy Spirit.1
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