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MAHĀVĪRA
-Amar Chand
Conditions of the Country
The sixth century B.C. is one of the cardinal epochs in human history. It was the age of extraordinary mental stir and spiritual unrest practically all over the world. For instance, Socrates in Greece, Zoroaster in Persia, and Lao Tse and Confucious in China marked a revolution in the thoughts of those countries. The appearance in India of Mahāvīra and the Buddha, in the same way, meant the advent of philosophical rationalism.
In Indian society, this age was in various ways economically, socially, religiously and even politically, a period of transition and uncertainty. From the simple, and, on the whole, republican social organisation of the Vedic times, the country had been passing through a process of gradual stratification until by this time, caste distinction and priestly oligarchy had become a means of popular exploitation and a source of enormous social irritation. Rituals and ceremonies came to be worked out in endless details, and most fanciful and mystic significance was attached to them. Bloody sacrifices became the order of the age and lasted for weeks, months and even years. Sūdras, the fourth and the lowermost caste, which formed a bulk of the population, were not only socially boycotted, but their very existence was questioned and even bare necessities of human-life were refused to them.
Such a state of things was very disconcerting to the considerate and serious-minded section of the society. Lord Pārsvanātha, the 23rd Tirthankara had preached against the existing evils of the society some 250 years before the advent of Mahāvīra. But after his death, society was again condemned to yet worse state of affairs. It was in the above circumstances that Mahāvīra, the twenty-fourth and the last in the galaxy of Tirtharikaras, was born.
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