Map

Victorious Across Eternity The Lives of the Jain Tīrthakaras

PAUL DUNDAS

Any first-time visitor to a large-scale Jain temple in India will at once be overcome by a wealth of impressions: the brightness and ornateness of the marble architecture, the pervasive sounds and scents of worship, the reverential if genial demeanor of devotees of all ages, and in particular the gleaming images seen in various parts of the shrine (Fig. 1.1). Our visitor will be aware that the principal object of worship in the temple is the icon of a human figure sunk in meditation, installed in the central shrine room, and he will note that it is flanked by similar albeit slightly less prominent images (Fig. 1.2). If he strolls around the outer wall surrounding the main shrine, he will likely see a row of twenty-four images, often housed in mini-shrines, which are much smaller in dimension and receive very little ritual or devotional attention compared to the main image of the temple but are otherwise identical in appearance to it. On closer inspection, these little images will be identifiable by a cartouche symbol particular to each of them and often also by a name engraved on the plinth on which each figure sits. Our visitor will learn that all these images, large and small, represent the Tīrthakaras, the twenty-four saving teachers of this particular time cycle, and that the main image to which the Jain temple is dedicated represents one of these individuals. 1

Seated in cross-legged impassivity or standing in an ascetic posture with arms hanging down, with elongated ears and painted, wide-open eyes indicative of superhuman powers of apprehension, images of Tīrthakaras are invariably highly stylized, and their religious significance is physically inscribed

1.1 | Jina (opposite page) India, southern Rajasthan, probably vicinity of Mt. Abu Dated by inscription to 1160 CE (Samvat 1217) White marble with traces of polychromy

23 1 / 2 x 19

x 8 1 / 2 inches (59.69 x 48.26 x 21.59 cm) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund Photograph by Katherine Wetzel © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on their obviously male and at the same time somewhat asexual forms. 2 As personifications of restraint and liberating knowledge, the Tīrthakaras represent both a spiritual type and specific teachers whom, in the light of the reverence directed toward them, our visitor to the Jain temple might be tempted to designate “saints” or even “gods.” However, neither divinity nor sainthood as understood in a monotheistic (Judaeo-Christian-Muslim) context are sufficiently adequate explanatory categories.

It is true that Jains use the expression “Bhagvān,” which can be rendered as “God,” to refer to the Tīrthakaras, but in fact this designation relates to these figures as a totality in terms of everything they represent, sometimes also called Paramātman (“Supreme Soul”), and acknowledges the innate and common capacity of human beings to transform their own innermost beings in the same way as the great teachers. Jains pay homage to this inner spiritual dimension when they worship the Tīrthakaras, and there is no question of these figures exercising any creative or regulatory role within the cosmos. Sanctity in the sense of moral perfection is no doubt a primary attribute of all the Tīrthakaras, but the notion of sainthood in the sense of a postmortem ability to intervene positively in the lives of devotees does not serve to define what is significant about these Jain teachers; as dead renunciants who have achieved deliverance from rebirth, they cannot become involved in human affairs. While the “vita” of a Christian saint is defined by one lifetime and very often a single climactic act of piety or martyrdom, the career of each Tīrthakara is played out over a vast span of time, during which innumerable vicissitudes of rebirth are undergone. Furthermore, as we shall see, the trajectories of the culminating existence of each Tīrthakara are necessarily identical.

A Tīrthakara, literally a “maker of a ford (tīrtha),” is a human teacher, one of a line of twenty-four similar figures recurring

1.2 | Temple at Ranakpur

15th century Photograph by Koichi Shinohara

without beginning or end throughout successive temporal phases. They are born in particular, morally efficacious regions of the two-and-a-half island continents of the “Middle World,” the narrow area located between the upper world of heavens and the lower world of hells; Jain cosmography holds that human beings are located in the “Middle World.” In his final birth, a Tīrthakara is a princely member of the warrior class who renounces the social and sensual world, performs austerities to eliminate the four main negative types of karma, and thereby attains omniscience. He then inaugurates anew the tīrtha, the Jain community of male and female renunciants (monks and nuns), laymen, and laywomen, and preaches the eternal uncreated scriptures that embody the doctrine of nonviolence and the renunciant vows whereby they are enacted. 3 Through their intense ascetic practice, the Tīrthakaras have attained the four infinite qualities that every soul possesses when in its purest form, namely: knowledge, vision, bliss, and energy. As victors over the passions, they are also known by the epithet “Jina,” or “conqueror,” from which the religion of Jainism takes its name.

Attainment of the status of Tīrthakara is contingent upon the cultivation of moral qualities throughout the process of rebirth and, above all, upon the gaining of a particular subdivision of a type of karma called nāman (literally “name”), which is developed from existence to existence. Name karma is one of four types of karma that Jainism deems to be non-injurious determinants of the basic qualities and parameters of each individual’s life span. Specifically, name karma is responsible for whether a transmigrating soul is reborn and embodied as a human, an animal, a god, a denizen of hell, or even an insect or a plant and also establishes the necessary physical structure appropriate to each state. Life in all its outward manifestations is complex, and there are accordingly forty-two significant subtypes of name karma. Of these, the forty-second is “Tīrthakara name” karma. This is itself composed of a variety of parts (twenty according to the Śvetāmbara sect and sixteen according to the Digambara sect) represented by highly positive ethical actions, which the individual must develop to the most intense degree but without any conscious aspiration to reach the state of a Tīrthakara.

Becoming a Tīrthakara is an extremely rare event, much rarer even than attaining omniscience. 4 While Tīrthakaras are of normal physical form, in the early stages of this time cycle they, like other human creatures, are of vast dimensions and longevity. Their bodies bear particular marks that signal their regal and superhuman status, 5 and they are of exceptionally strong physical structure to sustain the fierce austerities that characterize the path toward the gaining of omniscience and subsequent liberation. The Tīrthakaras’ elimination of negative karmic factors ensures that a huge number of living beings of all kinds can hear and understand their teachings with ease within a radius of a mile, and that in the course of their preaching, no danger, disease, or natural disaster occurs within that area. Every Jain temple is regarded as a locus of the moral purity that radiates from the Tīrthakaras.

The Tīrthakaras and history: abha, Nemi, and Pārśva

Twenty-four Tīrthakaras are regarded as having been born during this time cycle in Bharata, the southernmost region of the island-continent of Jambūdvīpa. It is uncertain when their names became fixed within Jain tradition, but the textual evidence suggests a date around the beginning of the first millennium CE. Thus the Āvaśyaka Sūtra, a Prākrit text that first enshrined basic Jain liturgy, contains a list of names framed within a devotional hymn in its second section, that has remained standard. 6 However, the symbols with which the Tīrthakaras are associated are not described in the early

texts and do not seem to appear consistently upon iconic representations until around the fifth century CE. Furthermore, the Śvetāmbara and Digambara sectarian traditions sometimes record differences with regard to these symbols.

The names of the twenty-four Tīrthakaras (in the Sanskrit form that has become standard) along with the symbols associated with them by the Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras are as follows 7 :

1. abha (bull),

2. Ajita (elephant),

3. 4. Sam . bhava (horse), Abhinandana (monkey),

5. Sumati (Śvet. heron / Dig. cuckoo),

6. Padmaprabha (lotus),

7.

Supārśva (Śvet. swastika emblem / Dig. nandyāvarta or swastika emblem), 8

8. Candraprabha (moon),

9.

Suvidhi (also called Pupadanta) (Śvet. crocodile / Dig. crab),

10.

Śītala (Śvet. śrivatsa emblem 9 / Dig. swastika or heavenly wishing tree), 11. Śreyām . sa (rhinoceros), 12. Vāsupūjya (buffalo), 13. Vimalā (boar), 14. Ānanta (Śvet. falcon / Dig. bear), 15. Dharma (thunderbolt), 16. Śānti (deer), 17. Kunthu (goat), 18. Ara (Śvet. nandyāvarta emblem / Dig. fish or flower), 19. Mallī (called Mallinātha by the Digs.) (water jar), 20. Munisuvrata (tortoise), 21. Nami (lotus), 22. Arianemi (more commonly known as Nemi or Neminātha) (conchshell), 23. Pārśva (cobra), and 24. Vardhamāna (more commonly known as Mahāvīra, “Great Hero”) (lion).

The earliest textual source for the lives of any of the Tīrthakaras is the Kalpa Sūtra, a composite work dealing with renunciant procedure (kalpa), no doubt compiled gradually and dating, in some form, from around the beginning of the common era. Regular recitation of this text played a significant part in the establishment of solidarity and identity in the Śvetāmbara Jain monastic community. 10 The

Kalpa Sūtra gives accounts of the final existences of the four Tīrthakaras for whom we can find clear artistic and archaeological evidence from the first century BCE to the first century CE and who have remained the most significant foci of devotional activity within Jainism to this day, namely abha (Figs. 1.3–1.4), Nemi, Pārśva (Fig. 1.6), and Mahāvīra. The Kalpa Sūtra does not discuss their previous existences; only the five kalyāakas, the highly auspicious salient events of these Tīrthakaras’ final births (descent from heavenly residence, birth, renunciation of the world, attainment of omniscience, and death leading to deliverance), are described.

An obvious question is whether all of these teachers, or indeed any of them, can be regarded as historical figures. Here we encounter a marked lack of correspondence between the concerns of devout followers of Jainism and of scholars who advocate a critical approach to ancient sources: the former hold to the genuine historicity of the entire line of twentyfour, while the latter argue that truly compelling evidence exists only for the last two, Pārśva and Mahāvīra. There is, of course, nothing inherently improbable about such a line of teachers and there scarcely exists a significant religious tradition that does not privilege some sort of authoritative chain of succession, descending from teacher through pupil, to validate the transmission of an authentic version of the faith. However, Jainism holds that the Tīrthakaras are separated from each other by long periods of time (the earliest of them by many millions of years and the last two by at least one hundred years), so there can be no question here of direct pupillary descent. Indeed, the sequential appearance of the Tīrthakaras over a huge temporal span is an essential component of Jainism’s cosmic narrative of the inexorable process of physical and moral decline that takes place in this particular “descending” (avasarpiī) cycle of time.

Defenders of the historicity of the Tīrthakaras suggest that if these vast periods of time are eliminated from the traditional biographies of the Tīrthakaras, then there remains quite simply a group of teachers. Evidence for the first representative, abha (often called Ādinātha, “Lord of the Beginning”), can be found, it is claimed, in India’s earliest archaeological and literary sources, thus substantiating the historicity of those coming after him (Figs. 1.3–1.4). However, there are difficulties with this interpretation as it relates to the first Tīrthakara. The

1.3 | abha

Gupta period; 5th Century H: 5 7 / 8 inches (14.9 cm) Dr. Siddharth Bhansali Collection Photograph by Judith Cooper

1.4 | abha

Gupta period; 5th Century H: 4 3 / 8 inches (11.1 cm) Dr. Siddharth Bhansali Collection Photograph by Judith Cooper

narrative that eventually came to be associated with abha (literally, “bull”) locates him many millions of years ago, at the beginning of the third phase of the current time cycle. At this time, as well as enacting the standard career of a Tīrthakara, he introduced a variety of practical and social skills to human beings and also participated paradigmatically in the very first act of giving (dāna) by a lay follower to a renunciant: at the end of a long period of fasting in the wilderness, he received sugar-cane juice as alms from a king. Those who argue for abha’s historicity point to depictions of bulls and crosslegged, vaguely ascetic-looking human figures on the clay seals found at excavation sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization (around 2500–1800 BCE ) to support their claim. They also adduce occurrences of the word “abha” in the poems of the g Veda, India’s earliest literary compositions from around 1400 to 1000 BCE, as further corroboration that the first Tīrthakara should be viewed as a genuine historical figure. Unfortunately, the context of the Indus Valley seals is far too uncertain to bear the interpretative weight placed on them, while inspection of the use of “abha” in the g Veda makes clear that it is regularly employed as no more than an epithet of the mighty Vedic god Indra.

The possible historicity of the twenty-second Tīrthakara, Nemi, who is said by the Kalpa Sūtra to have lived for one thousand years some eighty-five millennia ago, 11 raises rather different issues. All Jains are familiar with the story of how Nemi turned away from his marriage ceremony, organized by his cousin

1.5 | Nemi’s wedding

Folio 64 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript, verso Western Indian style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.72

K a, after hearing the anguished cries of the animals being slaughtered to feed the (non-Jain) guests and then renounced the world to embark on the final course of asceticism that led him to omniscience (Fig. 1.5). For the Jain, the location of this story in the vicinity of Mount Girnār in Gujarat, the site of Nemi’s enlightenment and death and an important pilgrimage place to this day, and the role within it of K a (more familiar as a Hindu deity and an incarnation of the god Vi u but viewed by Jains as a princely layman and, as in Hinduism, a historical figure) are a guarantee both of the veracity of this narrative and the ancient presence of Jainism in the western peninsula. 12 For the historian, however, this story can be read in a different manner: as deriving from the period of the gradual shift of the Jain community, which originated in the east of India, to the west of the subcontinent around the early centuries of the common era and its attempt to forge relations with the Vai ava devotees of K a in that region by assimilating their deity and transforming him into a subordinate associate of Nemi.

The evidence for the historicity of the twenty-third Tīrthakara, Pārśva, is more complex. Regarded as having lived for a span

of one hundred years some two and one-half centuries before Mahāvīra, and on that basis dated to around the seventh century BCE, Pārśva is said by the Kalpa Sūtra to have been born in the city of Varanasi. 13 As presented in the Kalpa Sūtra, the main events of his life are no different from those of the other Tīrthakaras described therein. However, a range of further sources both in the Śvetāmbara Jain scriptural canon and the Pāli Canon of the Buddhists suggests that Pārśva may have been a prominent teacher whose views on cosmology and renunciant behavior were drawn on and modified by Mahāvīra, who was possibly much nearer to him in time than traditional Jain chronology presents. 14 Images of Pārśva with a characteristic canopy of cobra hoods have been ubiquitous throughout Jain history (Fig. 1.6); indeed, the earliest identifiable image of any Tīrthakara is a statue dated between 120 and 75 BCE that can be recognized as Pārśva by the snake coils at its rear. 15 Based on a derivation of the name Pārśva and also his traditional association with snakes, it has recently been suggested that he was originally a serpent prince who became merged with the historical figure of a renunciant teacher to produce the celebrated Tīrthakara. 16 The story that largely defines Pārśva’s status as the most popular object of devotion within Jainism does not assume textual shape until the ninth century CE, when writers of the Digambara sect produced biographies that give full play to his earlier births. This story describes how Pārśva in his penultimate rebirth as a prince rescued a snake, which had become trapped in the blazing wood of a Brāhma ’s sacrificial fire. Impelled by the force of his anger, the Brāhma was reborn as the demon Kamaha, who assaulted Pārśva with rocks and lightning shafts as he sat in ascetic contemplation, having taken birth as the twentythird Tīrthakara-to-be. The rescued snake, reborn as a cobra prince called Dhara endra, protected Pārśva by sheltering him with its hoods. 17

It may be tempting to historicize this famous story as a narrative that rationalizes an ancient association of the teacher Pārśva with a cult of tutelary serpents, or, alternatively, to view Pārśva’s early iconic connection with a parasol of cobra

1.6 | Pārśva

Kushan period; 1st–3rd century H: 4 1 / 2 inches (11.4 cm) Dr. Siddharth Bhansali Collection Photograph by Judith Cooper hoods as evidence that the legend of his persecution by Kamaha and protection by Dhara endra is much older than the earliest textual versions would suggest. 18 However, while issues of historical background should not be skirted, it might be better to view the story of Pārśva as a powerful ethical parable focusing on issues central to Jain teaching, such as the desirability of nonviolence toward living creatures and the ties of action that bind individuals across existences. 19

The lives of the Tīrthakaras in Jain legendary history

The biographies of the Jain Tīrthakaras exemplify and encapsulate Jain doctrine through narrative, in which the similarity of the culminating births of the great teachers foregrounds the commonality of the karmic destiny that they have developed over the ages. Accounts of the Tīrthakaras’ lives and what preceded them were embedded and woven together in an extended structure of legend produced by many writers over several centuries, which scholars have come to call the Universal History. 20

A biographical framework, which originated in skeletal form at the beginning of the common era in the Niryuktis, laconic Prākrit metrical glosses on some of the most important and ancient Jain scriptural texts, was eventually to be fully formalized by around the sixth century CE by the great Śvetāmbara teacher Haribhadra, whose extensive commentary on the Niryukti verses linked to the Āvaśyaka Sūtra elaborates many of the major narrative themes in the lives of the Tīrthakaras. The most celebrated example of the Universal History is by another Śvetāmbara teacher, Hemacandra, whose Tri a iśalākāpuru acarita (“The Lives of Sixty-Three Illustrious Persons”) is a huge Sanskrit poem written in the twelfth century. It describes how the destinies of the twentyfour Tīrthakaras are intertwined in the current time cycle through existence after existence with thirty-nine heroic, non-renunciant protagonists who have been appropriated from the mythology of Hindu Vai avism: twelve universal emperors (cakravartin), including the hero-god Rāma; nine Baladevas, layman-like figures who observe the primacy of the teaching of nonviolence; nine princely heroes called Vāsudeva; and their nine enemies, the Prativāsudevas (literally “anti-Vāsudevas”), all of them participants in a cosmic drama that operates in accordance with the prescriptions of Jain teaching. 21 In elaborating this vast panorama of rebirth that

lays bare the resonating consequences of moral and immoral action, the Universal History describes how the Vāsudevas will eventually be reborn as Tīrthakaras while the immediate fate of the Prativāsudevas is to be reborn in hell.

The idealized accounts of the final existences of the Tīrthakaras that occur as the nodal points within the Universal History depict austere individuals who are located outside society and thus have little significant contact with the non-renunciant world beyond periodic sermons devoted to its evils. Even the details of their lives before renunciation are little more than sketched contours. Silence is depicted as the necessary modality of every Tīrthakara’s quotidian ascetic practice prior to omniscience, for after the attainment of perfect knowledge, his utterances are exclusively didactic. Each Tīrthakara throughout his life embodies a degree of impassivity and moral perfection that renders direct imitation by followers almost impossible. 22 It might, however, be argued that since each of these exalted figures has undergone many of the same vicissitudes of rebirth as his devotees, that shared experience among living creatures renders the Tīrthakara more readily accessible as a type to be emulated.

An inspection of the 105 previous existences of the twenty-four Tīrthakaras of this time cycle recorded by Hemacandra in his Lives of Sixty-Three Illustrious Persons shows that the first twenty-two were reborn in the lofty status of gods and princes only. Of the nine previous existences described for Pārśva, the twenty-third Tīrthakara, the first is a Brāhma , the second a pious elephant, and the rest are gods and kings. Only with Mahāvīra, the twenty-fourth Tīrthakara, does there occur a more developed range of existences, spanning a slightly wider range of possibilities. Among the twenty-seven existences specifically mentioned by Hemacandra, on one occasion Mahāvīra was a lion, on two occasions a humble human being, on another two a hell-being, and on six a Brāhma , while on the remaining occasions he was a king or a god. In the third existence recorded by Hemacandra, the soul of Mahāvīra manifested itself in the time of abha as the first Tīrthakara’s grandson Marīci, who lived as a proud but inadequate monk who could not endure the rigors of austerity despite his grandfather’s prophecy of his future rebirth as the last Tīrthakara of the time cycle.

The fact that karmic destiny has led even Mahāvīra to experience periods in hell, albeit temporary, and to be reborn as a renunciant who could not fulfill his vows is indicative of the reassuring Jain perception that the careers of those who gain the most exalted states can still show periods of moral decline typical of more ordinary humans and that existences as inferior forms of life such as animals or hell-beings can and will be brought to an end by the force of meritorious actions performed in the course of rebirths. However, narrative and artistic representations of the earlier existences of Mahāvīra and the other Tīrthakaras are relatively meager in extent compared to the vast number recorded for the Buddha in the Pāli Jātakas, or birth stories, of the Theravāda Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. We might conclude that accounts of the rebirths of the great teachers do not have a particularly prominent place within the Jain imagination.

The life of Mahāvīra

Let us turn now to the life of the twenty-fourth Tīrthakara, Mahāvīra (Great Hero). The Buddhist texts of the Pāli Canon show that Mahāvīra (there known as Niga ha Nātaputta) was a near exact contemporary of the Buddha, which dates him to around 490 to 415 BCE, although this remains a matter of scholarly debate. Unfortunately there is no actual description of Mahāvīra in the Pāli Canon nor any record there of the Buddha having encountered him, although his followers are often mentioned, so we must concentrate upon the evidence, however unsatisfactory, of the Jain scriptural texts in building a picture of this Tīrthakara.

The oldest textual account of Mahāvīra occurs in chapter eight of the first book of the Ācārāga Sūtra, a scripture of the Śvetāmbara canon dealing with correct renunciant behavior (ācāra), which has been unanimously judged to be one of the very earliest Jain texts, possibly dating from the fifth or fourth century BCE. In what seems to have originally been an independent poem, there is a graphic description of the physical difficulties and deprivations endured by the Great Hero for thirteen years after he had renounced his worldly ties. He is portrayed as having quickly abandoned clothing and human society to lead a life of wandering asceticism in remote and uncivilized regions, guarding the modalities of his body in order to avoid harming other living creatures in any way, all the while bravely enduring the discomforts of summer heat and winter cold, rough lodging, sleeplessness, fasting, and violent physical assaults by animals and unsympathetic people. 23 No doubt this idealized portrait of ascetic heroism

1.7 | Pārśva endures torments and is protected by Dharaendra

Folio 60 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript Western Indian style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.68

1.8 | Queen Triśalā’s dreams

Folio 4 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript Western Indian style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.12

preserves vestiges of the actual life followed by Mahāvīra during this period of his career, and it has undoubtedly served as an inspiration for Jain renunciants to the present day. However, it is markedly lacking in extended biographical data. For a more developed account, we have to consult two slightly later scriptures of the Śvetāmbara canon, both possibly composed around the first century CE: chapter fifteen of the second book of the Ācārāga Sūtra (which is undoubtedly later than the first book) and the opening portion of the Kalpa Sūtra, referred to earlier.

The accounts of these two texts by no means agree in every detail: for example, the second book of the Ācārāga Sūtra gives a much less elaborate account of the process of Mahāvīra’s birth and does not describe his death at all. In fact, the version found in the Kalpa Sūtra is the one with which most Śvetāmbara Jains are familiar today, since painted illustrations—often greatly ornate and with fine artistic detail—of the five kalyāakas, the auspicious events within a Tīrthakara’s final existence, are displayed to Śvetāmbara Jain congregations during the important festival of Paryua ā. I will therefore delineate the life of Mahāvīra in accordance with this source and then describe aspects of the story that were added later. 24

The Kalpa Sūtra states that Mahāvīra descended from the Vimāna heaven where he had dwelt for a karmically allotted period of time and took the form of an embryo in the womb of a Brāhma woman called Devānandā, who lived in the town of Ku agrāma. In anticipation of the birth, Devānandā experienced the fourteen auspicious dreams (an elephant, a bull, a lion, the lustration of the goddess of prosperity, a garland, a moon and sun, a flag, a vase, a lotus pool, an ocean, a heavenly realm, a pile of jewels, and a blazing fire) that invariably herald the appearance of some great figure, either a religious teacher or a universal emperor. She then informed her husband, abhadatta, who enthusiastically anticipated the birth of a son who would be a master of Brāhma learning. However, while surveying the world from his throne in the Saudharma Heaven, the god Śakra (more commonly known as Indra) saw the embryonic Mahāvīra taking shape in the womb of his Brāhma mother and recalled that mighty heroes such as Tīrthakaras are never born in either low or Brāhma families but only within the warrior nobility. Accordingly, Śakra instructed the general of his heavenly army, Hari egamesi, to transfer the embryo of Mahāvīra to the womb of a pregnant woman of the warrior class, Triśalā, the wife of King Siddhārtha, and take the embryo from her womb to that of Devānandā (Figs. 1.9–1.10). Triśalā then saw the auspicious dreams and had their significance explained to her, whereupon she eventually gave birth to the Tīrthakarato-be, an event greeted by the joyous acclamation of the gods (Figs. 1.8 and 1.11).

This episode can be interpreted as an example of the remarkable births deemed appropriate to divinities and important religious figures throughout the world and also as a polemic against the Brāhma class, whose authority renunciant movements like Jainism continually challenged. 25 The Kalpa Sūtra further describes how, prior to his birth, Mahāvīra did not cause his mother Triśalā any pain by kicking in the womb, only moving to reassure her that he was not dead, and also how at this juncture he undertook a vow not to renounce the world while his parents were still alive. These two prenatal resolutions can be regarded as having been prompted by the compassion for others, which guides Jainism’s central teaching of nonviolence, but the second may also pointedly allude to the behavior of the Buddha, whose biography, at least as understood by the Jains, portrays him as renouncing the world without any concern for the feelings of his parents.

The Tīrthakara-to-be’s birth was attended with lavish festivities and he was given the name Vardhamāna (Increasing), due to the growth in prosperity throughout his father’s kingdom at the time. The Kalpa Sūtra records that he was also called Śrama a (literally, “striver”), a term used for ascetics, because he was free from attachment and aversion, and that the gods also gave him the designation Mahāvīra, or Great Hero, owing to his forbearance and endurance in the face of the difficulties of the renunciant life. 26

The Kalpa Sūtra recounts no events in Mahāvīra’s life until the death of his parents when he was thirty years old. Then, he realized that the time for renunciation had come and, having obtained the permission of his brother and other elders, proceeded to distribute all his manifold possessions and finery among the deserving (Fig. 1.12). The celebratory procession that invariably precedes entry into the state of renunciation was attended by great crowds of mortals and gods, who transported the Tīrthakara-to-be on a jeweled palanquin to a

1.9 | Indra with Hariegamesi (above) Folio 11 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.19

1.10 | Transfer of the embryo

Folio 15 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript

Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.23

1.11 | Interpretation of dreams (above) Folio 32 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript, verso Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper 4 3 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.40

1.12 | The great gift

Folio 45 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript

Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.53

1.13 | Mahāvīra on his way to renounce the world (above) Folio 47 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.55

1.14 | Mahāvīra’s renunciation

Folio 48 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript, verso

Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.56

park outside Ku agrāma, and its climax was signaled by Mahāvīra pulling out his hair in five handfuls (Figs. 1.13–1.14). Then, after fasting for two-and-a-half days without taking water, wearing what the Kalpa Sūtra calls a divine robe (explained by later hagiographers as a gift of the god Śakra), he entered the state of homelessness quite alone. He wore his robe for only thirteen months; for a period of twelve years, he was naked and without possessions, using only his cupped hands to receive food. He was guarded in his every action and thought, indifferent to his surroundings, but truly free as he meditated upon his innermost self.

At the end of this regime of wandering ascetic detachment,

During the thirteenth year, in the second month of summer, in the fourth fortnight, on its tenth day, when the shadow had turned towards the east and the first watch was over, outside of the town J mbhikagrāma on the bank of the river jupālika, not far from an old temple, in the field of the householder Sāmāga, under a sāl tree, when the moon was in conjunction with the asterism Uttaraphalgunī, Mahāvīra in a squatting position with joined heels, exposing himself to the heat of the sun, after fasting two-and-a-half days without drinking water, being engaged in deep meditation, reached the highest knowledge and intuition called Kevala, which is infinite, supreme, unobstructed, unimpeded, complete and full. 27 Mahāvīra had become fully omniscient, directly familiar with all possible actions, thoughts, and events relating to every living creature in all quarters of the universe in the past, present, and future. He now knew and saw everything.

After simply enumerating the locations of the forty-two, fourmonth rain retreats that Mahāvīra passed in the region of what is now the modern state of Bihar, the Kalpa Sūtra records that Mahāvīra, seated cross-legged, alone, and reciting sacred texts, died one night at the town of Pāpa, becoming liberated and free from all suffering, to the accompaniment of a great uproar by the gods. On that same night, Mahāvīra’s closest disciple, Indrabhūti Gautama (of whom no mention has hitherto been made by the Kalpa Sūtra), himself attained omniscience after having severed his ties of affection for his master, an event that was followed by the institution of a commemorative festival by the rulers of the various local regions. After making prophecies about the varying fortunes of Jain renunciants in future times, the Kalpa Sūtra enumerates the numbers of the community that Mahāvīra left behind: 14,000 monks led by Indrabhūti, 36,000 nuns led by the chief female renunciant Candanā, 159,000 laymen led by Śakhaśataka, and 318,000 laywomen led by Sulasā and Revatī. 28 The Tīrthakara’s career is summed up in the following terms: thirty years as a householder, more than twelve years as a fully renunciant (i.e., naked) ascetic on the path to enlightenment, thirty years in the state of omniscience, forty-two years altogether as a renunciant ascetic, and a total life span of seventy-two years. His death is described as having occurred three years, eightand-a-half months before the conclusion of the “uneven-even” period of the current descending time cycle and the beginning of the “uneven” period—the time of severe decline in moral behavior, in which we are located at this moment.

Many elements of the biography of Mahāvīra familiar to later Jains are not provided by the Kalpa Sūtra. The second book of the Ācārāga Sūtra refers to his wife, Yaśodā, and daughter Anodyā (also called Priyadarśanā) and the fact that Mahāvīra’s parents were lay followers of Pārśva, who fasted to death and would eventually achieve liberation. During the early centuries of the first millennium CE, beginning with texts that can generally be assigned to the chronologically more advanced stages of the Śvetāmbara scriptural canon, Jain tradition gradually added further details to Mahāvīra’s biography, creating a fuller, more developed narrative in the same way that Buddhist tradition expanded the few facts about the Buddha’s life scattered around its earliest texts. For example, regular references are made to the samavasaraa, a circular amphitheater magically created by the gods to accommodate a central dais for Mahāvīra’s first sermon after his enlightenment, and the jeweled balustrades and corridors where his audience of humans, animals, and gods could assemble (Fig. 1.15).

Although a description of the samavasaraa came to be a typical motif in the extended biographies of all Tīrthakaras, the occasion of Mahāvīra’s first sermon also afforded a narrative opportunity to clarify the manner in which he came into contact with his closest disciples. This segment of the biography, which probably does not much predate the sixth century CE, describes how a group of eleven Brāhma s about to perform an elaborate sacrifice saw the gods flying over their ritual enclosure without alighting there as anticipated. On following the gods to their destination, the Brāhma s found them listening to Mahāvīra

preaching in his samavasaraa. They engaged him in debate on a variety of philosophical topics and became convinced of the ethical superiority of the Jain teaching of nonviolence and moral responsibility. These Brāhma s, headed by Indrabhūti Gautama, became the gaadharas, the leaders of the renunciant troop, who channelled Mahāvīra teachings and configured them in the appropriate linguistic and scriptural form, suitable for general understanding. All the Tīrthakaras came to be envisaged as having such a group of disciples.

The introduction of other more inimical protagonists such as Makkhali Gosāla and Jamāli, possibly reflecting some measure of historical accuracy, provided a degree of narrative tension in the biography. The fifteenth chapter of the Bhagavatī Sūtra, which seems originally to have been an independent text dating from the later stages of the formation of the scriptural canon, relates that Makkhali Gosāla, the later founder of a rival ascetic group called the Ājīvikas, attached himself to Mahāvīra toward the beginning of his career as an admiring follower who became tormented by jealousy. Eventually, after emitting a blast of ascetic fire against his master that rebounded onto him, he died admitting his own inadequacy in the face of the Tīrthakara’s superior spiritual attainments. 29 Jamāli became closely tied to Mahāvīra by later tradition that held he was the Tīrthakara’s son-in-law and the first individual from within the Jain community to challenge an element of his teachings. His attempt to found a rival community foundered

1.15 | Samavasaraa. Mahāvīra’s enlightenment

Folio 51 from a Kalpa Sūtra loose-leaf manuscript Western Indian Style, Patan, Gujarat, India; 1472 Opaque watercolor and ink on gold leaf on paper

43 / 4 x 10 1 / 4 inches (11 x 26 cm) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner, 1994.11.59

and he died alone and unrepentant, with the falsity of his teaching having been demonstrated not by his chief disciple. 30

Mahāvīra but by

Compared to hagiographies of religious heroes in other traditions, there are few miracles or spectacular feats attributed to Mahāvīra by his biographers: these are generally depicted as being the province of gods who, for example, cause parasols and other lavish regal insignia to continually attend the Tīrthakara in acknowledgment of his status and ascetic power. Occasional, potentially dramatic encounters, such as when Mahāvīra is bitten by the fierce serpent Ca akauśika, do not come to much and, as a rule, assaults on the Tīrthakara are resolved by divine or human intervention. In general, the biographies are more preoccupied with highlighting Mahāvīra’s solitary endurance than with recounting any developed personal interaction he might have had with others. 31 All in all, the versions of the life of Mahāvīra can be described as fairly subdued in tone and refreshingly lacking in febrile hagiographical intensity.

Tīrthakaras of the present and the future

Mahāvīra was the final Tīrthakara of the current descending cycle of time in the region of Bharata, with his tīrtha lasting for 21,000 years, to the end of the fifth of the six phases of the time cycle. The next Tīrthakara will not appear until the third phase of the succeeding ascending (utsarpiī) temporal cycle. Perhaps to compensate for the absence of an accessible saving teacher and to acknowledge an ancient scriptural statement that refers to both past and future Tīrthakaras, Jain texts of the early common era allowed for the presence of Tīrthakaras in other regions of the island-continent of Jambūdvīpa, of which Bharata was only the southern portion. In the region of Mahāvideha, which is situated at the center of Jambūdvīpa but surrounded by mountain ranges and rivers and therefore inaccessible to humans living elsewhere on the islandcontinent, the normal rhythms of time do not pertain and Tīrthakaras are continually being born in its eastern and western subregions. 32 Suitably meritorious activity by those living in Bharata can lead to rebirth there and to the certainty of gaining omniscience and deliverance in the wake of actually coming into contact with a Tīrthakara. Four Tīrthakaras, collectively called viharamāa (wandering), are preaching in Mahāvideha at this moment, of whom Sīmandhara is the most significant for devotees. This model of currently active Tīrthakaras is extended to one-and-a-half of the other islandcontinents of the Middle World, also inaccessible to those living in Bharata, where it is believed that another sixteen Tīrthakaras are preaching at this particular time. Indeed, medieval Jain cosmologists calculated that it is theoretically possible for there to be as many as 170 Tīrthakaras active at the same time in these areas.

Jain hagiographers have never been greatly preoccupied with the Tīrthakaras of previous time cycles, and little is known of them beyond the names of those born in the cycle prior to the current one. However, in keeping with general Jain speculation about likely future events as time evolves, the narrative tradition enshrined in the Universal History began to identify through the dynamics of karmic destiny the associates of the Tīrthakaras of this descending time cycle with the Tīrthakaras to be born in the next ascending temporal cycle. So Śre ika, a king who was a lay devotee of Mahāvīra (and is also known in Buddhist tradition), will be reborn as Mahāpadma, the first Tīrthakara of the next time cycle, while K a, the Tīrthakara Nemi’s cousin, will be reborn as Amama, the future twelfth Tīrthakara. Prior to these most glorious of final births, however, both will be required to spend a period of time in hell—Śre ika for having committed suicide after being imprisoned by his son and K a for various violent actions. In an earlier birth, the future fifteenth Tīrthakara, Nirmamasvāmin, was, as all Jain women know, the steadfast laywoman Sulasā who refused to pay homage to anyone other than Mahāvīra. 33

And so Tīrthakaras will appear again and again to teach the Jain path to deliverance as time rolls through endless eternity.

NOTES 1. Very occasionally a temple may be dedicated to one of the

Tīrthakaras currently preaching in the region of Mahāvideha. For these, see the concluding section of this essay. 2. Cf. Marcus Banks, “The Body in Jain Art,” in Approaches to Jaina

Studies: Philosophy, Logic, Rituals and Symbols, N.K. Wagle and

Olle Qvarnstrøm, 311–23 (Toronto: University of Toronto Centre for

South Asian Studies, 1999). According to Śvetāmbara Jain tradition, the nineteenth Tīrthakara, Mallī, was born as a woman, an exceptional and remarkable event, the result of having dissembled about the number of lengthy fasting regimes which s/he had engaged in her/his previous birth as a monk. Images of Mallī are, however, no different from those of other Tīrthakaras. 3. For Jainism and its teachings, see Paul Dundas, The Jains (London: Routledge, 2002). Jains also use the term tīrtha to refer to their holy places, which are envisaged both as crossing places to deliverance and sites where the community can assemble to gain direct contact with the doctrine. 4. An omniscient being who is not a Tīrthakara is called a kevalin. 5. See Willem Bollée, “Physical Aspects of Some Mahāpuruas: Descent,

Foetality, Birth,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 49 (2005): 5–34 . 6. This list is also found at Bhagavatī Sūtra 20. 8 (where Padmaprabha is called Suprabha and Candraprabha is called Śaśin), which is approximately contemporary with the Āvaśyaka Sūtra. See Jozef

Deleu, Viyāhapannatti (Bhagavaī). The Fifth Anga of the Jaina

Canon (Brugge: De Tempel, 1970), 256. 7. I follow, with some slight adjustments, Umakant P. Shah, Jaina-Rūpa

Maana (Jaina Iconography) (New Delhi: Abhinava Publications, 1987 ), 84. 8. The nandyāvarta is a more ornate version of the swastika symbol. 9. The śrīvatsa is an auspicious mark usually found on the chest of a heroic or holy figure. 10. See the Kalpa Sūtra, translated by Hermann Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, Part 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884), 217–310. Dating the constituent parts of the Śvetāmbara Jain scriptural canon is a notoriously difficult task, and often all that can be said with certainty is that a particular

text, in the form now available, can be dated no later than the fifth century CE, when the final process of redaction is regarded to have taken place. Many texts or portions of texts have probably been dated too early or have not come down to us in their original forms. I follow the broadly convincing chronological framework given by Suzuko

Ohira in A Study of the Bhagavatī Sūtra. A Chronological Study (Ahmedabad: Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology, 1994), 1 –39. 11. Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, 276–9. 12. Of the twenty-three other Tīrthakaras, twenty are regarded as having died on the summit of Mount Sammeta (modern Pārśvanātha Hill in Jharkhand), while abha passed away on Mount Kailāsa in the

Himālayas, Vāsupūjya at Campāpurī, and Mahāvīra at Pāvā. 13. Jain tradition records that three other Tīrthakaras ( Supārśva,

Candraprabha, and Śreyām . sa) were born in Vārā asī, the holiest city in Hinduism, or its environs, and four (abha, Ajita, Abhinandana, and Ānanta) were born in Ayodhyā, which Hindus regard as the birthplace and capital of the hero-god Rāma. In the absence of persuasive supporting evidence, it might be suspected that the appearance of claims for these connections coincided with the increasing rise to prominence of these cities in the first half of the first millennium CE. 14. See Sāgarmal Jain, “The Teachings of Arhat Pārśva and the

Distinctness of his Sect,” 15–24, and Dalsukh D. Malvaniya, “Jina

Pārśva in Jaina Canonical Literature,” 25–28, in Arhat Pārśva and

Dharaendra Nexus, ed. M.A. Dhaky (Ahmedabad: Lalbhai Dalpatbai

Institute of Indology; Delhi: Bhogilal Leharchand Institute of

Indology, 1997). 15. See Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, Ca. 150 BCE–100 CE (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 94. Images of Supārśva, one of the less commonly worshiped Tīrthakaras, are also distinguished by a canopy of cobra hoods, although they lack the coils to the rear that usually identify images of Pārśva. 16. See Willem Bollée, Ācārya Guabhadra’s Pārśvacaritam. Life of

Pārśva (Mumbai: Hindi Granth Karyalay, 2008), 2, where the Prākrit name Pāsa (Sanskrit: Pārśva) is derived from (U)pāsa(sena) (Sanskrit:

Upāśvaśena). A serpent prince named Aśvasena is described in a famous episode of the Hindu epic, the Mahābhārata, as having escaped with difficulty from a great forest fire. 17. See Bollée, Ācārya Guabhadra’s Pārśvacaritam; and Malvaniya,

“Jina Pārśva in Jaina Canonical Literature,” 28. 18. The narrative theme of the first Tīrthakara, abha, renouncing the world after witnessing the nymph Nīlāñjanā dancing herself to death is found textually at the same time as Digambara versions of the story of Pārśva. Yet its artistic presence at Mathurā around the second century CE shows that Jain tradition was familiar with some form of the story from an early time. See Quintanilla, History of Early Stone

Sculpture at Mathura, 41–7. 19. This anti-Brāhma theme can also be seen in the story of the twentieth Tīrthakara, Munisuvrata, which emerged at the same time as those of Pārśva, Kamaha, and Dhara endra. A friend of Munisuvrata died in an agitated state of mind and was reborn as a stallion that was to be killed in a Brahmanical horse sacrifice, performed to validate the authority of a king. The stallion heard

Munisuvrata preaching the Jain doctrine and, having thereby gained right belief, went on to be reborn as a god. 20. See John E. Cort, “An Overview of the Jaina Purā as,” in Purāa

Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts, ed. Wendy Doniger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 ), 185–206. 21. See Hemacandra, Tri a iśalākāpuru acarita or The Lives of Sixty

Three Illustrious Persons, Volumes 1–6, trans. Helen M. Johnson (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1931–62). Digambara Jain writers, while prepared to work within the overarching genre of the Universal

History, were also noteworthy, unlike their Śvetāmbara counterparts, for their accounts of the lives of individual Tīrthakaras. 22. See Phyllis Granoff, “From Detachment to Engagement: The

Construction of the Holy Man in Medieval Śvetāmbara Jain Literature,” in Constructions hagiographiques dans le monde indien, ed.

Françoise Mallison (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 2001), 97–121. 23. See Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, 79 –87. 24. Digambara Jains do not accept the authority of the Kalpa Sūtra or the authenticity of some of the events described in it, such as the transfer of Mahāvīra’s embryo or the Tīrthakara’s marriage. See Jacobi, Jaina

Sūtras, 189–210, for the relevant portion of book two of the Ācārāga

Sūtra. 25. Book two of the Ācārāga Sūtra gives Mahāvīra’s parents the

Brāhma clan name Kāśyapa, and the Tīrthakara is sometimes addressed by this title in the older portions of the scriptural canon.

Hari egamesi, portrayed in manuscripts of the Kalpa Sūtra with a deer head and human body, is a version of a goat-headed tutelary demiurge associated in early India with childbirth. The Jains seem to have understood his name as containing the word haria (“deer”).

See Bollée, “Physical Aspects of Some Mahāpuruas,” 12–13. 26. For the cosmic and ritual associations of the title Mahāvīra, see Bollée,

“Physical Aspects of Some Mahāpuruas,” 5–7. 27. Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, 263, slightly abridging and emending Jacobi’s translation. 28. Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, 268, which also enumerates the extensive numbers of renunciants in possession of advanced attainments at the time of Mahāvīra’s death. 29. See Dundas, The Jains, 28–30. 30. See Paul Dundas, “The Later Fortunes of Jamāli,” in Studies in Jaina

History and Culture: Disputes and Dialogues, ed. Peter Flügel (New

York: Routledge, 2006), 33–60. 31. See Granoff, “From Detachment to Engagement,” 99. 32. See Ohira, A Study of the Bhagavatī Sūtra, 204. Sūtrak tāga Sūtra 1.12.36 seems to refer to past and present Tīrthakaras. 33. See Nalini Balbir, “Tīrthakaras of the Future,” in Aspects of Jainology

Vol. III. Pt. Dalsukhbhai Malvania Felicitation Volume, ed. M.A.

Dhaky and S. Jain (Varanasi: P.V. Research Institute, 1991), 34–67.