The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c6.4

c6.4

§13. Next to the spiritual supermen, to whom we shall return in due course, we have the temporal heroes. It is in them, in their social standing as well as in their personal names and those connected with them, that we first and most distinctly behold the influence of non-Jain conceptions and, mainly, of such pertaining to the Kṛṣṇa mythology. There are grand sovereigns or world-emperors (cakkavaṭṭi) who are the immediate counterparts of the common-Indian cakravartin. In the baladeva and vāsudeva, comprised as dasāra-maṇḍala by Samav. 152b, the two homonymous heroic figures have been generalized into types, and Samav. 153a is consequent in calling these half-brothers duve rāmakesavā by then adding their names. The kulagara, finally, reflect the Brahman manu and the law-constituting ancestral fathers. During every half-circle covered by the ever revolving time-wheel¹ there arise 24 prophets, 12 grand sovereigns, 9 baladeva and as many vasudeva, and either 7, 10 or 15 legislators. It is these latter only that are traced back (Samav. 150 b) over the present half-course to the one immediately preceding, whereas for the one to succeed all different classes are noted (comp. also Thāṇ. 455b, 457b ff.). And, what is more, from the uniformity regarding the cosmographic structure (§ 119) it follows that the appearance of all these men in our southernmost continent of Bharaha has its counterpart in the northernmost of Eravaya. So that, then, we hear (Thāṇ. 76a ; Samav. 72b, 153b) of the corresponding men also in this continent, if only by their names, and, indeed, they make their appearance even in the nearest continents (§ 122), as Thāṇ. 123b, if only by way of indication, shows (see also below). In this respect the continent of Mahāvideha is but rarely mentioned (Viy. 791a and, accordingly, Thāṇ. 201a).