Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 31

INTRODUCTION : HISTORY, ETC.
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soul together by a diet of fruits, roots, etc., wearing leaves and the bark of trees. It was in this way that the kulpa- rikslus yielded food and clothing to the people of the Woga-Blūmi. The remaining three ages, howerer, are of kurma-bhūmi, the uge or lund of work. In these men have to work for their subsistence in this life and also for their comforts and blessings in the life to come. It is in the first of these last three, or in the fourth age of the era, that twentyfour Tirthaikaras, or guides, arose. By pursuing the Jaina course of life, as laymen and ascetics, ther obtained perfect knowledge and absolute and eternal freedom from the bondage of lurmus, which alone keep a man in samsāra (cycle of existences): and they preached and published the Jaina religion to the world. The last of the Tirthaikaras in the fourth age of the current cycle was Vardhamana, otherwise Jahāvīra. He was born in 599 B.C.,l in the family of a ruling Kshattriya chief of the Nāya clan (hence in Buddhist books he is called Vātā-putta, a son of the Nātri, or Vāra lineage), in the republic of Vaišāli (modern North Behar), in the town of the same name (hence he is called also Vaišālika), at the site of the modern village of Besārh, about 27 miles north of Patna. After living with his family during twenty-eight years as a married man with a daughter, a wife, a brother, and sister,
1 Traditional date for the Svetāmlaras, the Digambara tradition working out at 60 years earlier. Profes-or Jacobi would place the death of Jahāvīra in 177-6; B.C. and adjust the other dates accordingly.
- According to the Digambaras Malāvīra never married and was a celibate throughout his life.