Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 15

LIFE OF MAHA'VIRA.
Mahavira, the founder, or (as it would perhaps be more accurate to call him) the reformer, of Jainism, was born about 599 B. C. His antagonism to Brahmanism was marked even before his birth. for we are told in one of the most famous of the Jaina sacred books, the Kalpa Sutra,* that his embryo was removed from the Brahmani Devanandā to the Kṣatriyani Tris'alā.
His father Siddhartha was a petty Raja, the head of the Ksatriya clan of the Nata, who lived in Kollaga, a suburb of Vaisali (the modern Besar, about 27 miles north of Patna. Dr. Hoernlet gives a most interesting account of the government of this place, which seems to have been a sort of oligarchie republic; " its government was vested in a Senate, composed of the heads of the resident Ksatriya clans, and presided over by an officer who had the title of King and was assisted by a Viceroy and a Commander in chief."
Siddhartha was married to Tris'ala, the daughter of this republican king, and from the Kalpa Sutra we gain a charming picture of the happy motherhood of the princess. We read of her joy when, through the fourteen wondrous dreams vouchsafed to her in one night, she learnt that she should bear a prophet son, and of her fixed determination not to go to sleep again that night lest any unlucky dreams should mar the effect. Before the child was born" she took her walks in places which were empty and agreeable as well
⚫ Sacred Books of the East. Vol. xxii. p. 226.
† Annual Address, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1898. + S. B. E. xxii. 240.
3