Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 211

JAINISM fully propose difficult questions for her to answer: but the queen could always reply immediately; for she had within her no less a personage than the conqueror of omniscience. Moreover, throughout the period of her blessed pregnancy, she was undisturbed by pain.
When the son was born the thrones of all the Indras trembled, and the gods understood that the Lord had seen the light of day. With pomp they descended for the celebration of the Second Kalyāņa, "the salutary event of the Savior's birth" (janma-kalyāṇa). The child was of a beautiful blue-black complexion,18 grew rapidly in beauty and young strength, and, as a boy, enjoyed traveling from place to place on horseback and on the mighty backs of the great royal elephants. He frequently sported in the water with the water-gods and in the forest with the gods of the trees and hills. But in all this childlike playthough he indulged in it with the greatest spirit-there was manisest the pure moral sweciness of his extraordinary nature. He assumed and began to practice the twelve basic vows of the adult Jaina householder when he reached the age of eight.14
Now Pārsva's maternal grandsather was a king named Mahipāla, who, when his wife died, became so disconsolate that he renounced his throne and retired to the wilderness to practice the severest
nown to the penitential groves. There
13 He was a scion, that is to say, of the non-Aryan, aboriginal stock of India.
14 The Jaina householder, 1. must not destroy life, 2. must not tell a lie, 3. must not make unpermitted use of another man's property, 4. must be chaste, 5. must limit his possessions, 6. must make a perpetual and a daily vow to go only in certain directions and certain distances, 7. must avoid useless talk and action, 8. must avoid thought of sinful things, 9. must limit the articles of his diet and enjoyment for the day, 10. must worship at fixed times, morning, noon, and evening, 1. must fast on certain days, and 12. must give charity in the way of knowledge, moncy, etc., every day. (Tattvārthadhigama Sutra, translated with commentary by J. L. Jaini, Sacred Books of the Jainas, Arrah, no date, Vol. II, pp. 142-143.)
196