The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c6.23

c6.23

§14. In now turning to the spiritual heroes we have to distinguish between such who *find* and such who *preach* salvation, and as to the former we may denote them as the *patteya-buddha*. Viy. 895a places them next to the latter though fails to give any particulars for doing so, nor do we find any in the two only remaining and, by the way, later passages of Samav. 123a and Nandi 203a. The appertaining persons first appear in the narrative tradition of the Āvassaya². The preachers of salvation (titthagara, arahaṃ, jiṇa; Viy. 583a and Ṭhāṇ. 302a : devādhideva) of the current osappiṇī are called : 1. Usabha, 2. Ajiya, 3. Sambhava, 4. Abhinandaṇa, 5. Sumai, 6. Paumappabha, 7. Supāsa, 8. Candappabha, 9. Suvihi Pupphadanta, 10. Siyala, 11. Sejjamsa, 12. Vāsupujja, 13. Vimala, 14. Aṇanta, 15. Dhamma, 16. Santi, 17. Kunthu, 18. Ara, 19. Malli, 20. Muṇisuvvaya, 21. Nami, 22. Ariṭṭhaṇemi, 23. Pāsa, 24. Vaddhamāṇa or Mahāvīra. For Paumappabha and Candappabha Viy. 792a has Suppabha and Sasi ; in an isolated inscription (§ 25) Ara is called Nāṇdyāvarta ; Ariṭṭhaṇemi is frequently shortened into Nemi. The entire series is closely dealt with by Samav. 150a and Āv. 230 ff. though this is being done in comprising gāhās only. They record the names of each in their pre-existence, those of their parents, of their first alms-givers, pupils both male and female, and other items. What else we find in the Samav. and in the Ṭhāṇ. as well rests in correspondence to the purpose of these works, on figures which, faithful to the system, are mostly very large. Thus we learn, though but incompletely and frequently without any recognizable principle, at what age a Titthagara devoted himself to monastic life, how many groups of disciples and group-leaders he had, how many among his followers owned a certain amount of spiritual knowledge and were endowed with certain kinds of cognition, how old he came to be, how tall he was, etc. Jinac. 184-203 in dealing with those from 2 up to 21 confines himself to giving the distances of the one from the other, from Mahāvīra or from the present of that time. A number of them is attributed certain colours of the body (Thāṇ. 98b)¹, and, what is more, in pairs : 6 and 12 are *pauma-gora* red, 8 and 9 *candagora*, white, 19 and 23 *piyangu-sāma* dark, and 20 and 22 *nīl'uppala*, blue. The remaining are golden. For a smaller part these colours are due to the names of their bearers, and this, too, goes back to legends. Such is equally the case with reports stating, for instance (Samav. 42b), that 23 preachers of salvation (2-24) were minor princes (*maṇḍali-rāya*) prior to their monastic life, or, as Thāṇ. 351b gives it, that five (12. 19. 22-24) were *kumāra* when becoming monks. By the earliest plastic image of a Titthagara handed down to us (§ 25, comp. also § 24) it is proved that their representation showing merely their typical features was given personal traits by adding a symbol. The Canon does not refer to such symbols. For the most part they consist in animals (for 1-4 : bull, elephant, horse, monkey : for 23 and 24 : snake and lion), but also in the red and blue lotus (6 and 21), in patterns (7, 10, 15, 18), in the water-jug (19) and in the shell (22)². A direct reference to the name of the Titthagara is made merely by the bull of the Ṛṣabha ; Mahāvīra's lion may be connected with the words : *sīh'ubbhava*³.