Religion and Culture of the Jains

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

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
Tīrthankaras of the Śramaņa current of ancient Indian culture, for instance he added 'chastity' as the fifth vow to the system of 'four-fold self-restraint' attributed to Pārsva. He successfully tackled the various problems of the day, such as, slavery, inferior status of woman in family, society and religion, the Brāhmaṇical caste system and untouchability, the exploitation of the weak by the strong, the ills of economic inequality, indulgence in carnal desires and passions of the flesh, killing or hurting life for the sake of religion or pleasure of the senses, and the like, which are no less in evidence in the present day world.
He supplied a very firm philosophical footing to the simple Ahimsāite creed of the Sramana Tīrthankaras, and reorganised the four-fold order of monks, nuns, laymen and lay-women. The movement started in the time of the twentieth or twentyfirst Tīrthankara for the revival of Śramaņa-dharma, and fed and strengthened by Aristanemi and Pārsva, was an accomplished fact by the time Māhavīra's career on this earth came to a close. The cultural heritage of this last Arhat can vie with the best.
This the master of thought, the great apostle of ahimsā the benefactor of mankind and the friend of all living being ended his bodily existence, attaining nirvāṇa on the banks of a lotuspond outside the town of Pāwā (in Bihar), a little before dawn, on the 15th day of the dark half of the month of Kārtika, 470 years before the beginning of the Vikrama era and 605 years before that of the Saka era, that is, in the year 527 B.C., which occasion is celebrated to this day as the Dīpāvalī, or 'festival of lamps', symbolising the perpetuation and universalisation of the Master's truth-revealing and soul-illuminating 'light of knowledge', when he himself was no more corporeally.