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

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JAINA IMAGES
Jaina Images
THERE ARE a number of close correspondences between this legend of the last life of Pārsvanātha and the biography of the Lord Buddha. Moreover, certain images of the Buddha, showing him protected by a serpent, can hardly be distinguished from those of the Jaina Tirthankara (Plates IV and V). Unquestionably the two religions share a cominon tradition. The births of the two saviors are much the same; so too are the anecdotes of the marvelous knowledge they displayed as children. Soothsayers foretold for each the carecr either of a Cakravartin or of a World Redeemer. Both grow up as princes, but departed from their fathers' palaces to the forest to engage in similar enterprises of ascetic self-realization. And in the culminating episodes of the biographies-the attaininent of fulfillment-Samvara's attack on Pārsvanātha corresponds to that of Māra, the god of desire and death, on the meditating Gautama sākyamuni.
For, as we are told, when the Future Buddha had taken his place beneath the Bo Tree, on the Immovable Spot, the god whose name is both Māra ("Death") and Kāma ("Desire") 20 Challenged him, seeking to move him from his state of concentration. In the character of Kāma, he deployed the world's supreme distraction before the meditating savior, in the form of three tempting goddesses together with their retinues, and when these failed to produce the usual effect, resorted to his terrible form of Māra. With a mighty host he attempted to terrify and even slay the Buddha-causing mighty storms of wind, showers of rain, flaming rocks, weapons, live coals, hot ashes, sand, boiling 20 Cf. supra, pp. 143-145.
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