Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 19

LIFE OF MAHA'VIRA.
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Venerable One), a Kevali (i.e. Possessor of Kevala ($944] or spiritual nature) and a Mahāvira or Great Hero ), and by each of this galaxy of titles he is varyingly called. Now" he knew and saw all conditions of the world, of gods, of men and demons; whence they come, whither they go, whether they are born as men or animals or become gods or hellbeings, the ideas, the thoughts of their minds, the food, doings, desires, the open and secret deeds of all the living beings in the whole world ” *
It is from his title of Jina that his sect and system derive their name. The Buddhist name for Mahāvira, however, is Nātaputta, from his clan, and the Jaina scriptures occasionally call him Vesāliya from his birth place.
For thirty years more Mahāvira taught his doctrine, gathering followers round him. Gos'āla had been his first disciple. Jacobi + thinks he was the head of an independent sect, who threw in his lot for a time with Mahāvira but separated on the question of leadership, but Dr. Hoernle I believes him to have been a follower who after six years quarrelled with his master and became head of the Ajivika order of monks, which are mentioned on As'oka's pillar, about 234 B, C., but which have long ceased to exist. In the Sutrakritāngas a dispute between Gos'āla and a zealous disciple of Mahāvira is recorded, in which of course Gos'āla is ignominiously routed. This Gos'āla must have been a cantankerous fellow, for he is mentioned in the Buddhist Scriptures as an antagonist of Buddha also.
Mahāvira made many converts to his religious system * S. B. E. xxii. 263.
+S. B. E. xlv. Introd: p. xxix. Annual Address, A. S. B. 1898 p. 41. & S. B. E. xlv. 409.