World Of Jainism

Author(s): Vishwanath Pandey
Publisher: Vishwanath Pandey

Page 19

THE WORLD OF JAINISM
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iii. not to tell lies, iv. not to own property. There is a controversy among some Jaina scholars according to whom one of the four teachings of Parsva was the practice of chastity and Mahavira added the fifth one i.e. not to own property. But we shall here adopt the former view. Mahavira added the fifth yowthe practice of chastity and also made confession compulsory for the monks. These facts clearly show that Mahavira reformed and built on what Parsva had already done.
Mahavira
The last and the twentyfourth Tirthankara was Mahavira. He was born when “the times were ripe for revolt". He was born at Kundagrama near Vaisali of Kshatriya parents. His father Siddhartha was the chief of the Kshatriya clan known as Jnatrikas. His mother Trisala was the sister of Chetaka, a powerful Licchavi prince ruling over Vaisali. Vardhamana was related to the king Bimbisara of Magadha who had married Chellana, the daughter of Chetaka. Thus, Mahavina was closely related to the two powerful princely families in the region, viz. Vaisali and Magadha.
Dreams of Trisala
According to Kalpa Sutra Trisala saw fourteen dreams before she gave birth to Vardhamana." There is a slight controversy between the Digambara and the Swetambara sects of the Jainas regarding a few of these dreams but they are unanimous regarding most of them. Only a very brief mention can be made of these dreams. In the first dream she saw an enormous elephant whiter than an empty great cloud, in the second she saw "a lucky bull of a whiter hue than that of the mass of petals of white lotus", in the third she saw a handsomely shaped playful lion jumping from the sky towards her face, in the fourth she saw with the face of the full moon goddess Sri on the mount of Himayat, in the fifth she was a garland charmingly interwoven with fresh Mandara flowers coming from the firmament in the sixth she saw the moon white as cow's milk in the seventh she saw the large sun, the dispeller of the mass of darkness, in the eighth she saw an extremely beautiful and very large flag, in the ninth she saw a full vase of costly metal respondent with fine gold, in the tenth she saw a Lotus Lake adorned with water lilies, in the eleventh she saw the milkocean, in the twelfth she saw an excellent celestial abode, in the thirteenth she saw an enormous heap of jewels and in the fourteenth she saw a fire.
The interpreters of the dreams told Siddhartha that "a universal emperor or a Gina, the lord of the three worlds" would be born.14 Vardhamana was born at the end of the