Study in the Origins and Development of Jainism

Author(s): S N Shrivastava
Publisher: Rekha Publication Gorakhpur

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A Study in the Origins and Development of Jainism
Brāhmanical families .......... (they) are born in high families, noble families, in families belonging to the race of Ikashvāku, or of Hari or in other such families of pure descent on both sides."19 Śakra, then ordered Harinegamesi, the commander of army to transfer the embryo of Mahāvīra from the womb of Devānandă to that of Trisalã of the Vašīştha gotra wife of kshatriya Kundagrama. According to Kalpa Sūtra the event of the transfer of embryo took place on the eighty-third day after the conception of Devanandã. It is also stated in this text that in the night of eighty-third day Trišalã also saw all those fourteen objects in dream which Devānanda had seen. The embryo-transfer event occurred on the thirteenth day of the dark half of the month of Ăśvina when the moon was in conjunction with uttarpahālguni.
Needless to say that the above-mentioned story of embryo transfer is a fiction. But the question to be answered is as to why this story was concocted by Bhadrabahu, the author of Kalpa Sūtra. On this point the opinion of Jacobi is that 'Siddhartha had two wives, the brāhmaņi Devănandã, the real mother of Mahāvīra, and the kshatriyāni Trišală”. According to him, 'the name of the alleged husband of the former, viz. Rişabhadatta cannot be very old because its prākrit form would in that case probably be Uşabhadiñña instead of Uşabhadatta. Besides, the name is such as could be given to a Jain only not to a brāhmaṇa. I therefore, make no doubt that Rişabhadatta has been invented by the Jains to provide Devanandã with another husband'.20 In his view the marriage of Siddhārtha with Trisalā had brought him in connection with 'persons of high rank and great influence. It was, therefore probably thought more profitable to give out that Mahāvīra was the son, and not merely the step son of Trisalã, for this reason that he should be entitled to the patronage of her relations'. He further writes, 'But as the real state of things could not totally have been erased from the memory of the people, the story of the transfer of the embryo was invented'. ?? According to A. K. Chatterjee, Devānandã was probably the real mother of