Study of Jainism

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 66

Other Tirthankaras
51
two has been represented as having begun in the ninth incarnation before the last as the tirthankara. Then they were two brothers, Marubhūti and Kamatha. Kamatha was the elder brother and evil incarnate, always full of jealousy and hatred for the younger brother. Marubhūti was the future tirthankara. Out of disgust, Kamatha was sent away from the house by his father. Deprived of honour and humiliated, Kamatha, engaged himself in austere practices not in the humble spirit of renunciation, but with the intent to acquire demonic power for the sake of taking revenge on his brother and the family. He was practicing austerities with extreme rigour standing in the sun and holding aloft a huge stone. Marubhūti, the future tirthankara, out of innocent good-ness went to pay obeisance to Kamatha. He knelt down in salutation and Kamatha full of rage and revenge threw the stone on his head. Marubhūti died This story of revenge sets the stage for a long and complicated series of encounters and surprises. The wicked Kamatha passes through a number of forms paralleling those of his virtuous and gradually maturing brother, the first increasing in violence and passion and the other increasing in virtue and becoming more harmonious within himself. “Thus the brother of this Jaina legend actually serves as light - even as Judas, in the Christian, serves the cause of Jesus" 63 But in the Jaina legend the dark brother is not eternally damned. He is redeemed from the bondage in the spheres of ignorance and pain. The concepts of heaven and hell in Jaina mythology are only purgetory stations, representing degrees of realisation experienced on the way to ultimate transcendence of all empirical existence. Judas is represented in a number of medieval legends as the older brother of Jesus”. 64
In the next series of lives the enmity continues. Marubhūti was born an elephant named Vajraghośa due to the karma occuring from distressing thoughts at the time of violent death. His brother Kamatha was born as a huge serpent. The elephant Vajraghosa had developed a pious attitude. Once the huge serpent struck him dead. The series of lives and the consequent revengeful conflict between the brothers continued every time Marubhūti rising higher in the attainment of virtue and peace, while the dark brother falling in the precipice of revenge and vice. In these life series,