Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya Rajat Jayanti Mahotsava

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 191

SILVER JUBILEE ]
DATES OF TIRTHAMKARAS
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sets of works that historical data useful to all can be collected so far as the age of Krsna and Aristanemi, which would be somewhere between 1100 to 1000 B.C. is concerned. If this is correct there would be a difference of about 300-400 years between the 22nd and the 23rd Tirthařkaras.
5. Further although I have not as yet been able to identify any of the other Tirtharnkaras between Aristanemi and Rsabhadeva, in the Bhagawata works I have found that the latter at least is common to them and the Jaina works. Not only that but he is described therein as an ideal saint who had attained the summum bonum of life after relinquishing his kingdom for a life in the forests, as many kings in days of yore used to do. By a common tradition he was the father of Bharata, from wiose name the country's name Bhāratavarsa is derived and who too is described as having taken to a forest life in his old age. Now according to the Bhagawata Purāņa Rşabhadeva was also the father of the nine Yogeswaras who were the contemporaries of King Nimi ol Videha. This Nimi is shown as the 22nd in ascent from Janaka, the father-in-law of Rämacandra of the Solar race according to the Balakanda of the Rāmāyaṇa. The latter is believed to have lived about 500 years prior to Kșsna who took part in the Mahabharata war, i.e. about 1600 B.C. according to Pargiter. Allowing 30 years for each generation on an average we arrive at the figure 2260 B.C., or roughly 2250 B.c. for Nimi and 9 Yogesvaras. The age of Rşabhadeva, the father of the latter, would therefore approximately come to about 2300 B.C. at the lowest computation.
6. Now, it is not a historical fact that Rsabhadeva had preached or laught the principles underlying the religious practices of the Jainas. It must have been only from his course of conduct that some of those principles must have been deduced. The history of the Indian religious systems shows according to Winternitz that as a result of the teaching of the Upanişad school various Brahmanas and Kşatriyas had been giving up worldly life at a certain age and devoting themselves in seclusion to making attempts to solve the mysteries of the existence of the sentient and insentient beings, the human consciousness, &c., by making experiments on their own minds and bodies. They used to record their experiences in ballads and songs. These were handed down from teacher to pupil. The predecessors of the Bhägawatas and the Jainas belonged originally to one such ascetic school, which had its own tradition and hierarchy of saints. Some years after the death of Krsna Dwaipāyana Vyāsa tried to assimilate its doctrines with the ancient Vedic religion and create a taste for worldly life by propounding the doctrine of Karma-Yoga, which promised