Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA
four great Prophets come to the world, somewhat, though not entirely, of the nature of Avaṭāras. They always climb up from manhood, while, in some cases, the Hindu is loath to admit that an Avaṭāra is a perfected man. The Jaina has no doubt at all on this point. His twenty-four great Teachers, the Tirthamkaras, as they are called, these are perfected men. To them he gives the many names that you will find applied in Buddhism in somewhat different senses. He speaks of them as Arhats, as Buddhas, as Tathagatas, and so on, but above all as Jinas; the Jina is the conqueror, the man made perfect, who has conquered his lower nature, who has reached divinity, in whom the Jiva asserts his supreme and perfected powers: he is the Ishvara, from the Jaina point of view.
Twenty-four of these appear in each great cycle, and, if you take the Kalpa Sutra of the Jainas, you will find in that the lives of these Jinas. The life of the only one which is given there at all fully --and the fullness is of a very limited descriptionis that of the twenty-fourth and last, He who was called Mahāvīra, the mighty Hero. He stands to the Jaina as the last representative of the Teachers of the world; as I said, He is contemporary with Shakya Muni, and by some He is said to be His kinsman. His life was simple, with little incident apparently, but great teachings. Coming down from loftier regions to His latest incarnation, that in which he was to obtain illumination, He at first guided his course into a Brahmaņa family, where, it