Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 74

CHAPTER X
THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL
Jainism marks a distinction between the higher and the lower orders of its followers. The community is divided into four classes, namely, Saints and laymen (termed house-holders) among males, and nuns and pious laity among females. The division is grounded on the principle that all men and women cannot be expected to come up, all at once, and without long and adequate previous training, to that high ideal of self-effacement that demands the selling off of all one is possessed of and its distribution in charity.
There were eighty four apostles of the WORLD TEACHER amongst them being Vrisabha Sen, Kachha Maha Kachha, Nami and Vinami whom we have already met in this narrative. Jaya Varma was also one of the Apostles of the Tirthamkara.
There were no less than 20,000 Omniscient Saints who followed the Holy Tirthamkara. 12,700 saints were endowed with the subtler mental Perception, 9,000 with Clairvoyance; and 4,750 knew the entirety of the twelve departments of the Teaching of Truth! There were 20,6co Saints who enjoyed wonderful miraculous powers. Many other saints followed the Lord. Of this vast number by far the major portion attained nirvana, the rest re-incarnating in the heavens.
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