Studies in Buddhist and Jaina Monachism

Author(s): Nand Kishor Prasad
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 200

VASSAVĀSA
179 Rajagrha during the rest of his life. Mahāvīra renounced the world at the age of thirty and attained enlightenment in the twelfth year of his ascetic life, that is, when he was forty-two. He spent the thirteenth vassāvasa at Rajagsha, and we find that nine more were passed at the same place during the rest of his life as teacher. This intimate association with Rajagsha leads one to believe that Ajátaśatru who was a king of Jaina leaning was reigning during the period. If this is the fact, then it may be presumed that Ajátasatru succeeded King Birnbisāra, when Mahávīra was forty-two and the Buddha fifty-five, that is Mahavira was thirteen years younger than the Buddha. According to tradition the Buddha died at the age of eighty and Mahavira at seventy. Thus if our guess is correct, thon Mahavira died five years after the Buddha. According to the Jaina tradition Mahavira died in five hundred twenty-seven B. C., while the Theravada Buddhist tradition places the mahā parinibbana of the Buddha in 543 B. C. Thus while our above calculation shows the interval between the nirvana of the two teachers to be five years, the respective traditions make it sixteen years. Of course this is a discripancy, but not too serious to take our conjecture to the realm of impossibility.
(vi) Occasions for the interruption of the Retreat Normally a monk or a nun, once he or she entered upon the retreat, was not allowed to go out on tour before the completion of the period. But this rigidity--not to go away during the retreat, could not remain for long, for the cause of the Order suffered a lot because of the stay of the complete Order at one place for three months together. Consequently, the rule was relaxed by the sanction to go out for a week even during the retreat, if anybody is sent for by any one of the seven classes of people, namely, a monk, a nun, a probationary woman (sikkhamāna), a novice-male or female (sämanera or samanert), a lay-devotee-male or female (upāsaka or upasika) with a view to accomplish the act of bestowing gifts of vihara, an addhayoga and a pasada, etc., which have been built by any one of them either for the Fraternity, or for a number or monks, or for an individual monk or nun.1
The Order always paid great attention to the interest of the laydevotees. As such a monk or a nun was allowed to break the retreat for a week, even if such constructions were made for the personal use
1. MV, 3. 3. 5-7, pp. 146-48.