Outlines of Jainism

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

Page 38

XXXIV
OUTLINES OF JAINISM
Pārsva-nātha. He is said to have preceded Pārsva-nātha by 5,000 years. But Indian history before 327 B.C. is mostly a reconstruction by analogy: and we need not pause to reject or defend the exact tive millenniumis which are said to separate Nemi-nātha from the historical Pārsva-nātha. But the authenticity of his life need not be rejected without strong evidence. He was a prince born of the Yādava clan at Dwāraká, and he renounced the world, when about to be married to Princess Rājamati, daughter of the Chief Ugra-sena. When the marriage procession of Nemi-nātha approached the bride's castle, he heard the bleating and moaning of animals in a cattle pen. Upon inquiry he found that the animals were to be slaughtered for the guests, his own friends and party. (It must be remembered that he was a Kshattriya and that the Kshattriyas as a rule hunt and take meat; although many of them renoumce it altogether, and their women, even in modern India, do not partake of it.) Compassion surged up in the youthful breast of Nemi-nātha, and the torture which his marriage would cause to so many dumb creatures laid bare before him the mockery of hunan civilization and its heartless selfishness. He flung away his princely ornaments, and repaired at once to the forest. The bride who had dedicated herself to him as a prince followed him also in his ascetic's life and became a nun. He attained nirrūnu at Mount Girnār, in the small state of Junagadh in Käthiāwādl; and on the same lovely mountain is shown a grotto where the chaste Rājamati breathed her last. not far from the feet of Nemi-nātha. There is a romance and idealism