World of Conquerors

Author(s): Natubhai Shah
Publisher: Natubhai Shah

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Risabhdeva—the first tirthankara The Kalpa Sutra (ascribed to Bhadrabahu: 3 century BCE), describes the biographies of the first, twenty-second, twenty-third and twenty-fourth tirthankaras, and mentions in brief second to twenty-first tirthankaras.
According to Jain traditional accounts, Risabhdeva lived at the end of the third cosmic phase. He is also known as Adinatha (the 'First Lord'). He was said to be the son of the fourteenth Patriarch Nabhiraja and his wife Marudevi; his family took the name Ikswaku, because, according to the ninth century CE Jain scholar Jinasena, Risabhdeva was the first to teach people how to extract the juice of sugar cane (in Sanskrit, ikshu) (Kalghatgi 1988: p.18). The age in which Risabhdeva lived is described in the texts as a transitional period when old traditions were fading and new values were yet to assert themselves. People lived, as it were, in mid-stride with one foot still in the past and the other ready to step into the new social environment yet to be consolidated. The earlier nomadic way of life had ended, but family and social stability were yet to become established. The population was slowly increasing, yet natural resources and social structures appeared to be inadequate, As a consequence, human greed arose, and with it a tendency for criminality. It was therefore necessary to draw up codes of conduct for the betterment of society and in order to facilitate the establishment of a stable social order, the fourteenth Patriarch, Nabhiraja, organised people into a social polity. His son Risabhdeva became the first king and exercised political authority, establishing the capital of his kingdom at Vinitanagara (modern Ayodhya) and producing the first laws for the governance of his people. Although historians are not surprisingly, sceptical about the traditional accounts of the lives of the twenty-four tirthankaras, it may well be that Risabhdeva was an actual prehistoric figure around whose real life much legend has gathered over time. Other civilisations look back to their founding ancestors, often embellishing their biographies with legend: the early Emperors of China or the Patriarchs of the Bible are but two examples of this, and historians will perhaps never completely succeed in separating myth from historical fact.
Jain tradition says that the most important task facing Risabhdeva was to provide food, shelter and protection for his subjects; he taught his people agriculture, further military skills, as well as introducing the skill of making earthenware pottery and fire for cooking. Education was not neglected and he taught the seventy-two traditional arts for men and the sixty-four for women. Jinasena also notes the six main arts and sciences of Risabhdeva's time: (i) the use of weapons (asi), (ii) writing (masi), (iii) agriculture (krusi), (iv) education (vidya), (v) trade and commerce (vanijya), and (vi) art and architecture (silpa) (Kalghatgi 1988: p.19). Risabhdeva's sons and daughters received instruction in economics, social science, dancing, singing, painting and mathematics. During his reign animals were first domesticated: cows, horses and elephants. His daughter Brahmi was taught the alphabet and literature, and so the early script, the precursor of the devanaagari system (in today's Hindi and other north Indian languages) called braahmi. Risabhdeva is therefore seen as the pioneer of education and the arts of civilisation, and he taught that the status of women was equal to that of men.
Risabhdeva was the first to divide the people into three classes (varna): warrior (ksatriya), merchant (vaisya) and manual worker (sudra), based purely on the division of labour, not on birth, which contrasts with the situation in the later Indian caste system. The aim of caste divisions was to utilise the capabilities of different people in an efficient
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