Lord Mahavira and His Teachings

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

Page 33

Lord Mahavira and His Teachings
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Path, after rejecting much of the religious thought current round about him. That was not the case with Mahavira. The religion preached by Vrishabha, Neminatha and his immediate predecessor Parshva (who flourished just a couple of centuries before Mahavira) was already inherited by him and he presented it for contemporary society. Buddha is less compromising with the creeds of his contemporaries, because he started with the conviction that he had personally discovered something new for humanity. But Mahavira was more accommodating and compromising and quite willing to understand the point of view of others, primarily because he was preaching an earlier religion, may be for a slightly different order of monks and laymen. "It is evident," as Jacobi has remarked, "that both Mahavira and Buddha have made use of the interest and support of their families to propagate their Order. Their prevalence over other rivals was certainly due in some degree to their connection with the chief families of the country." Buddha had a longer lease of life: he lived for full eighty years; while Mahavira lived only 72 years. The middle path of Buddha struck ca note of novelty and inspired so much enthusiasm among his new followers that its influence spread far and wide. Mahavira, however, had to preach both to old and new followers, and obviously he must have been guided by a spirit of compromise: the question of new recruits was not with him as urgent as it was with Buddha. There is evidence, further confirmed by close similarity between Jaina and Buddhist monastic rules, that Buddha did try the Nirgrantha way of living for a while, obviously the one preached long before by Parshvanatha. As observed by Jacobi