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Mahavira & Jainism

 

The legendary founder of Jainism was called Rishabha, but claims that he lived many millions of years ago are obviously exaggerated. This first Tirthankara (literally "maker of the river-crossing") is said to have invented cooking, writing, pottery, painting, and sculpture, the institution of marriage and ceremonies for the dead. Not much else is recorded about Rishabha and the next twenty Tirthankaras, but the ancient Jaina tradition that there were ascetic religious teachers in India before the coming of the Vedic Aryans is likely from evidence found in the Harappan culture. The twenty-second Tirthankara, Arishtanemi, is mentioned in the Kalpa Sutra. All of the Tirthankaras were Kshatriyas, and Arishtanemi was the son of King Ashvasena of Varanasi (Benares) and cousin of Krishna, who is supposed to have lived during the great Bharata war probably about 900 BC. According to legend Krishna negotiated his marriage to princess Rajamati. However, when Arishtanemi discovered the great number of deer and other animals to be sacrificed at his wedding, he changed his mind to prevent their slaughter, brooded over the cruelty and violence of human society, and soon renounced the world to seek and find enlightenment.

The twenty-third Tirthankara, Parshva, probably lived in the eighth century BC. Legends connect him with snakes, one of whom he saved from fire when a Brahman ascetic was about to burn a log where it was hiding. He married a princess, and up to the age of thirty he lived in great splendor and happiness as a householder. Then he gave up all his wealth to become an ascetic. After 84 days of intense meditation he became enlightened and taught as a saint for seventy years. Parshva was called "Beloved" and organized an Order (Samgha) of monks, nuns, and lay votaries of many thousands, though the numbers are probably exaggerated. He had eight or ten disciples (ganadharas) according to different sources. His religion was open to all without distinction of caste or creed, and women were a large part of the Order. He allowed his followers to wear an upper and lower garment.

The main emphasis of Parshva was on the first vow of non-injury (ahimsa) or abstinence from killing any living beings. The other three vows Parshva required were truthfulness, not to steal, and freedom from possession. These vows are exactly the same as the first four vows of the Sannyasins of the Vedic tradition who renounce the world. The Brahmanic fifth vow of liberality could not be practiced by mendicants without possessions.

Contemporaries : Two centuries later during the life of Mahavira there were still followers of Parshva, and they are mentioned in Buddhist texts as well as in Jaina scriptures. In addition to Brahmanical sects of ascetics like those described in the Upanishads , who acknowledged the authority of the Vedas, new Shramana (ascetic) sects were appearing which challenged the Vedas and their rituals, emphasizing ethics and allowing those of any caste and women to renounce the world as well. Before turning to Mahavira and the Buddha , let us briefly examine a few of the other teachers who appeared in India in that spiritually rich sixth century BC. Purana Kassapa was a respected teacher who promulgated a no-action theory (akriyavada). Once to King Ajatashatru he explained that there is no guilt for causing grief or torment or killing, obbing, etc., and no merit for offering sacrifices, self-mastery, or speaking truth, because the soul is assive, and no action can affect it. Nothing can defile one nor purify one. Purana Kassapa claimed that only an infinite mind could comprehend a finite world, and it was said that he could perceive anything. The Buddha even credited Kassapa and other heretical teachers with the ability to know where a particular dead person was reborn.

Another esteemed religious leader was Pakudha Katyayana who may have been the one who asked Pippalada in the Prashna Upanishad about the roots of things. His doctrine classified everything into seven categories: earth, water, fire, air, pleasure, pain, and soul, all of which are eternal. Like Kassapa, Katyayana denied the reality of action asserting that the soul is superior to good and evil and untouched by any change. His doctrine was called Eternalism by Mahavira and the Buddha who both considered it another theory of non-action.

The founder of materialism in India was Ajita Keshakambalin. He found no merit in sacrificing or offering or doing good either, because nothing exists but the material world - no other world, no afterlife, no benefit from service, no ascetics who have attained enlightenment or perfection. When a person dies, the body returns to earth, fluids to water, heat to fire, and breath to air, the senses into space, and no individuality remains. He criticized the view of Katyayana and others that the soul existed independently of the body. Ajita saw the individual as a whole which the apprehending mind can conceive. Mahavira criticized Ajita's philosophy for encouraging people to kill, burn, destroy, and enjoy the pleasures of life, but actually Ajita taught people to respect life and honor the living while they are alive rather than death and those who are dead.

The leader of the agnostics (Ajnanavada) was Sanjaya Belatthiputta. He found so many contradictory views of the soul and body current that he believed it was better to realize that one is ignorant of these things than to adopt one folly or another. His followers were described as wriggling out of answering questions like an eel and were criticized by Jainas for walking around in ignorance. However, in disregarding speculative questions he did attempt to focus the attention of his many followers on the attainment and preservation of mental equanimity. Sanjaya may have prepared the way for Mahavira's doctrine of antinomies (syadvada) and the Buddha's method of critical investigation (vibhajyavada), for they both found that there could be no final answers to some of the difficult questions of cosmology, ontology, theology, and eschatology.

The leader of the Ajivaka sect at this time, Mankhali Gosala, became closely associated with Mahavira. Gosala traveled with Mahavira for six years, but then he left because of doctrinal differences and was the leader of the Ajivaka sect for sixteen years in Savatthi at the pottery workshop of the woman Halahala.

Gosala taught a theory of transformation through re-animation like the seeds of plants. Humans are purified through transmigration, and the complete cycle of reincarnation periods is said to be eighty-four hundred thousand, possibly the origin of the term "wheel of eighty-four." He believed that everything was pre-destined, and nothing could change fate. Thus he denied the usefulness of effort or manly vigor, rationalizing that these, like all things, are unalterably fixed and predetermined. Everything acts according to its own nature, and nature is a self-evolving activity making things come to pass and cease to be.

Karma is independent of individual will and follows its own logic. Gosala categorized humanity into six groups and put himself with only two other individuals in the "supremely white" category. He described eight stages of life from babyhood to renunciation, and his followers practiced the fourfold discipline of asceticism, austerity, comfort-loathing, and solitude. Although criticized by Jainas and Buddhists as amoral, Gosala actually taught that although predetermined it was one's duty to be lawful, not trespass on other's rights, make full use of one's liberties, be considerate, pure, abstain from killing, be free from earthly possessions, reduce the necessities of life, and strive for the best and highest of human potential. Aside from the determinism one can find many similarities in the teachings of Gosala and Mahavira. They divided living beings into the same six categories, and both recommended nudity for the saints and believed in the omniscience of the released.

 

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Courtesy : Shri S. K. Bhandari

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Mail to : Ahimsa Foundation
www.jainsamaj.org
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