Book Title: Tirthankar Mahavir and His Sarvodaya Tirth
Author(s): Hukamchand Bharilla, K C Lalwani
Publisher: Kundkund Kahan Digambar Jain Trust
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TIRTHANKARA MAHAVIRA AND HIS SARVODAYA TIRTHA
come from their births previous with the acquisition of a great merit called Tirthankara-prakyti, for which all of them have in common five auspicious events, which need no repetetion here This is the reason why, apart from the life story of Risabha, those of other Tirthankaras have hardly any scope for literary or poetic elegance. Leaving aside a few events in the life of Risabhadeva, the rest have been shared by the succeeding Tirthankaras
From Ajita to Nami, the most important things to note aie that the 16th Tirthankara Santinatha, the 17th Kunthunatha and the 18th Aranatha had been Cakravarties and Kamadevas before they became Tirthankaras
A Cakravarti is one who is the master of the six segments of the world with 32000 crowned feudatory kings as his vassals. He acquires nine treasures, fourteen gems He has 96000 consorts in attendance. His army has 84 crores of warriors, 18 crores horses, 84 lakhs elephants and a similar number of chariots, 3 crores cows and 1 crore ploughs. The details of a Cakravarti's treasures may be looked up in the Jaina Purānas
Kamadeva is a great man with a highly Their number is 24
graceful body.
Since three of the Tirthankaras had been world monarchs, the description of their life-story was perhaps exception to contain a separate account of their secular greatness, but since this bears some similarity with that of Bharata who himself was a world monarch, this has been meticulously abondoned to avoid repetition.
At the time of the 20th Tirthankara Muni Suvratanatha, there lived in India the legendary heroes, Rama and Laksmana. Rama had never been a Tirthankara but he has been widely noticed in the Jaina literature There are quite a few Jaina Tirthankaras who have not been separately noticed in the Jaina texts, but Rama story in some facet of it is rarely missing either in the Purānas or in Kavyas (long poems) The reason for this is the many facetedness of Rama's life, which does throw some light on one aspect or another of any one's life The National Poet Maithili Saran Gupta has rightly sung:
