Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
abuses, beating, tortures and persecutions inflicted on him by bad, rude or sinful people, the attacks of violent beasts, reptiles and poisonous insects, the inclemency of weather, and various other dreadful calamities. He wandered about disregarding all slights and inflictions. He was free from resentment. No worldly enjoyment or amusement could allure or attract him. He meditated day and night, undisturbed, unperturbed, exerting himself strenuously to achieve the goal he had set before him.
At last, while sitting in transcendental spiritual concentration under a śāla tree (shorea robusta) on the banks of the river Rjupālikā outside the town of Jțmbhika, he attained kaivalya, the supreme knowledge and intuition, unobstructed, unimpeded, unlimited, complete and full, and became the Arhat, the Jina, the Tīrthankara. It was the 10th day of the bright half of the month of Vaisākha, in 527 B.C.
During the next thirty years of his career as Tirthankara or the great teacher he travelled on foot from place to place, giving his message of peace and goodwill for the good and beatitude of all living beings, without any distinction of race, caste, class, age or sex. His first sermon was delivered at Mt. Vipula, one of the five hills which surrounded Rājagsha, the great Magadhan capital, on the first day of the month of Srāvana in the year 557 B.C.
His congregation was called the samava-sarana because it offered equal religious opportunity to all and sundry alike. His first and foremost disciple and the head of his male ascetic order was Indrabhūti Gautama who had been celebrated far and wide for his learning and mastery of Vedic lore and ritual and commanded a considerable following. The female ascetics of the order were headed by Candanā, the male laity by Sreņika alias Bimbasāra, the emperor of Magadha, and the female laity by Śreņika's queen Celanā. This four-fold order, which he had reorganised and placed on a sound footing, is said to have comprised, at the time of his nirvāna, some fifty thousand recluses of both sexes and about half a million members of the