Mahavira His Life and Teachings

Author(s): Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Luzac and Co UK

Page 38

LIFE
31
highest knowledge and intuition, called Kevala, which is infinite, supreme, unobstructed, unimpeded, complete, and full. He was then lost in deep meditation in a squatting position with joined heels, exposing himself to the heat of the sun, after fasting two days and a half even without drinking water.
Thus at the age of forty-two he had become a Jina and Arhat,-a Kevalin, omniscient, all-seeing, and all-knowing. He knew and saw all conditions of the world of the gods, men, and demons · whence they come, whither they go, where they are born as men or animals, gods or infernal beings, according to their deeds?
During the thirty years of his career as Teacher, he spent four rainy seasons in Vaiśālī and Vānijagrāma, fourteen in Rājagrha and Nalandā, six in Mithilā, two in Bhadrikā, one in Alabhikā, one in Pranıtabhūmi, one in Srāvasti, and one in the town of Pāvā which was his last rainy season. In the fourth month of that rainy season, in the seventh fortnight, in the dark fortnight of Kärttika, on its fifteenth day, in the last watch of the night in the town of Pāvā, in king Hastipāla's office of the writers, the venerable Ascetic died, went off,
Jaina-Sūtras, Part I, pp. 260-264.