Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 308

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVĀN MAHĀVĪRA'S CULT 301
the advent of Mahāvīra, or at least before the departure of Bhadrabahu and his twelve thousand from Magadha to the south (3rd Century B.C.).
II. The Cult in the Pre-Christian Era:
11. The twenty-three Tirthankaras, who preceded Bhagavān Mahāvīra, had ended their worldly career as Paramahamsya recluses. Mahāvīra, the 24th and the last, not only co-ordinating the tenets of these twenty-three, but brought into being a 'samgha' also, regulating the ways of life, beliefs and even the day-to-day food, dress and manners of his followers. Jainism and Jaina, thenceforward assumed distinct denominatioal individualities throughout northern India-that phenomenon, however, did not percolate into the southern regions during the Bhagavan's life-time.
12. Jaina tradition declares that the monk, śrutakevalin Bhadrabahu, with 12,000 of his disciples, had to emigrate from Magadha to southern India due to an unusually long drought of twelve years' duration, during the reign of Candragupta Maurya, (Circa 300 B.C.). It further asserts that the Maurya himself arrived at Śravana Belgoļā in the Mysore State to fast himself unto death as a Jaina recluse. It is irrational to assume that Bhadrabāhu had not already established contacts with the south before he and his batch of 12,000 started on their 1500mile-long trek to Mysore. Several months of pre-planning must have preceded the exodus. One must imagine such an army of mendicants, roaming about the land, begging their daily bread, to comprehend the full significance of the new impact between the north and the south. And, when the immigrants arrived, it must have been easy work for them to co-ordinate the activities of the already-existing nirgrantha recluses and integrate them into the fold of the followers of the Bhagavan. The old and the new came naturally under a central organization, which in modern, parlance, can be called 'the Jaina Church of Dravida'.
13.
Whether Bhadrabahu ever visited the land of the Tamils or not, Visakha-Muni, his follower, is said to have co-ordinated
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