Lord Mahavira and His Teachings

Author(s): Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 31

Lord Mahavira and His Teaching
Vaishali is rising up again. The Bihar: Government have started a Post-graduate Institute there for Prakrit and Jaina studies, and Dr. Hiralal Jain is the first worthy Director of this growing Institute. We kave no doubt that the place will be a great centre of learning.
Through the ravages of time and tide, and due to political vicissitudes. Vaishali fell into ruins; and we had nearly forgotten its identity. But you will be pleased to hear that Vaishali has not forgotten its worthy sons. Among the Jaina and Buddhist relics, the most important remnant is a plot of fertile land, owned by a local significant family of Simba or Natha Kshatriyas, which is never cultivated, as far as the family memory goes, because for generations it is believed in the family that on that spat Mahavira was born and hence it is too sacred to be cultivated. It is a remarkable event in the religious history of India that the memory of Mahavira is so concretely kept at his birthplace by his kinsmen though 2500 years have quietly elapsed.
! The period in which Mahavira lived was undoubtedly an age of acute intellectual upheaval in the cultural history of India; and among his contemporaries there were such religious teachers as Kesha Kambalin, Makkhali Gosala, Pakudha Kaccayana, Purana Kassapa, Sanjaya Belatthiputta and Tathagata Buddha. Mahavira inherited a good deal from earlier Tirthankaras He left behind not only, a systematic religion and philosophy but also a well-knit social order of ascetics and lay follows who earnestly followed and practised what he and his