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The Gods Named Him "Mahāvira", the Great Hero
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personality whose impact upon his contemporaries was profound and has been transmitted to subsequent generations. This lively and impassioned devotion is enshrined in this sūtra which is more venerated, recited and invested with lustre than any other.37
There is a striking contrast between the exuberance, profusion of riches and abundance of legendary descriptions in the Kalpa-sutra and the austerely sober tone of the most ancient text, the Acārānga-sūtra I, which is certainly stamped with the mark of authenticity. Here an ardent underlying devotion is no less detectable, but it is much more discreet, realistic, real. Mahāvira, as described to us, is also the great ascetic, the inspirer of a great and servent movement, of a both original and durable character.38
This, in short, is what the Acărănga conveys to us: Mahävira was an ascetic, recluse, solitary, a pilgrim travelling towards the goal of supreme Realisation, little known, one who under maltreatment and insults stayed calm, hurnble, unshaken, full of patience and endurance, his attention directed towards the essential, namely self-mastery, respect for all beings, radical dispossession of the self and mental concentration as means towards Realisation of the atman.
For thirteen months he wore the same garment, then cast it away and stayed naked.39 He lived in silence and concentration in spite of far from favourable surroundings, jesting and scossing, the presence of
37 To fill out this brief summary it is necessary to read the whole text; cf. the edition of Präkrit Bhārāti, 1977, which contains a selection of coloured reproductions of original miniatures of the XVIth c. The stories of the lives of the most celebrated tirtharkaras: Adinātha, Neminātha, and Pārsvanatha, are close copies of the story of Mahāvira's life.
38 We may note that AS II, a later text, gives a description of the perio preceding the renunciation very similar to that of the KS. The KS also describes Mahāvira the ascetic, but in a style less restrained than that of the AS I. Cf. Dixit, 1978, pp. 11-12: "no super-humanization of the biography of Mahāvira."
39 Cf. AS I, 8, 1, 3.
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