Temple of Satrunjaya

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 25

23. PARSVA or PARSVANATHA19 was the son of king Asvasena by Vama or Vama Devi; of the race of Iksvaku, with a blue complexion, having a hooded snake (seşaphani) for his cognizance, and is often represented as sitting under the expanded hoods of a snake with many heads, much like the so-called Naga figures at Ajanta and elsewhere 20. His šāsanadevi was Padmavati. He was born at Bhelupura in the suburbs of Varanasi (Benares); married Prabhavati the daughter of king Prasenajit; and according to the Kalpa Sutra, "adopted an ascetic life, with three hundred others, when he was thirty years of age, and for eighty days he practised austerities before arriving at perfect wisdom. He lived after this seventy years, less eighty days, his whole term of life being one hundred years, after which he obtained liberation from passion and freedom from pain. He owns one garment, and had under his direction a large number of male and female ascetics." His death took place two hundred and fifty years before that of the last Tirthankara (i.e., B.C. 777). He died while, with thirty others, performing a fast on the top of Mount Sammeya or Samet Sikhar. 21
24. VARDHAMANA, VIRA, MAHAVIRA, VARDHAMANA PRABHU, etc, and surnamed Carama Tirthakrt, or last of the Jinas, and emphatically Sramana or the saint. He was the son of Siddhartha by Trisala ;22 of the race of Iksvaku and family of Kasyapa; born at Citrakot or Kundagrama, and described as of a golden complexi having the lion (sinha) as his cognizance. His śāsana devi was Siddhayika. His life is the subject of the Kalpa Sutra, which professes to have been composed by Bhadrabahu Svami of Anandapura, now Badnagar, in the reign of Dhruvasena, 980 years after the death of Mahavira, i.e., A.D. 454.23
20
10 "The life of this celebrated Jina, who was perhaps the real founder of the Sect,
is the subject of a poem entitled Parsvanatha Caritra."-Colebrooke, Essays, ut. sup. II. 212; Asiat Res., Vol. IX. p. 309. It was written by Briddha Tapa Gaccha in Samvat 1654 and occasionally calls this Jina by the name of Jagannatha.Delamaine, Asiat. Trans., Vol. I, pp. 428, 432. The Caritra states that whilst Parsvanatha was engaged in his devotions his enemy Kamatha caused a great rain to fall upon him, but the serpent Dharanidhara came and, at Seva nagari, overshadowed his head as with a chatra. In the Satrunjaya Mahatmya, Dharana the Naga king is represented as approaching to worship. Parsva while engaged in his second kayotsarga or profound meditation, at Sivapuri in the Kausambaka forest, and holding his outspread hood (phana) over him as an umbrella. From this the town obtained the name of Ahichatra. Mah., XIV. 31-35. Compare Bigandet, Legend of Gautama, 2nd ed. p. 99 (1st ed. p. 69); Hardy's
Buddhism, p. 182. 21 Stevenson's Kalpa Sutra, Chap. VII. pp. 97, 98.
See the story of his birth in Max Muller's Hist. Sansk. Liter., p. 261, quoted from the Kalpa Sutra, pp. 35, 36. Weber makes it A.D. 632.- Uber das Satr. Mahat., p. 12. It refers to Satrunjaya in the following laudation of his book by the author:
10