The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c6.68

c6.68

§18. Vaddhamāṇa having kept his promise not to leave his parents as long as they lived⁶ and having obtained the consent probably to be given by his elder brother Nandivaddhaṇa, left his native country at the age of thirty after having arranged the distribution of his property and his heritage in the course of one year. It speaks for his inclination towards asceticism that he did so at the beginning of the cold season. Thirteen months later, i.e. in winter again, he decided to rid himself of his clothes as well⁷. This was to be the first great step out of Pāsaism which, as is demonstrated by Utt. 23, 19, knew of clothed adherents only. The ballad Āyār. I, 9, describing his early ascetic life and the austerity of his conduct further tells us of the *samaṇa bhagavam* devoting himself to meditation behind a wall of man’s height surrounding him on all sides (*porisi tiriya-bhitti*). This caused a great sensation, while, on the other hand, by his solitary and disobliging bearing he annoyed the people who did not fail to vent their anger on him. Festivities, though he took part in them, were indifferent to him. For more than two years he neither drank nor used cool water, and it was during this period that his ideas grew to maturity: it may be mentioned here that he came to cognize the animatedness of all physical substances, plants and animals, the up and down in the forms of existence, the Karman as being its cause, its influx by sensual perception and activity, and the woman as its mediator. The monastic basic laws equally took shape in that time. Perhaps we are correct in interpreting Āyār. I 9,1,22 by saying that after those two years and two months Mahāvīra resolved to take up that vagrant life which was to last for more than twelve years¹. Travelling towards the east he came as far as Lāḍha in West Bengal (Lāḍh, Rāḍh, Ṛāṛh) containing Vajjabhūmi and Subbhabhūmi, the land of the Suhmas. This period was characterized by utmost privations caused by inhospitable and and verminous quarters and many hardships owing to climate, stinging plants and insects, and wicked inhabitants who set dogs at him and ill-treated him. Mahāvīra himself made his life ascetic by the choice of his food, by fasting and by standing back behind animals and humans in need of help, while nothing is being said of self-castigations in bodily positions as incorporated into the system. The Uvahāṇa-suya closes by rendering that description. The two other texts have merely vague generalities ending up those twelve years by Mahāvīra’s entering into omni-cognition. In the Bhāvaṇā “both the possession and the acquisition of cognitions ... thread the preceding biographical sketch (p. 121 f., 130 f. of the edition)”¹. Here from the dogmatic view it is traced that even when still an embryo Mahāvīra was in possession of the first three kinds of cognition (*tinnāṇō-vagaya*)² and the way how at the beginning of his monastic career the fourth (*maṇapajjava-ṇāṇa*) made its appearance³. By the fifth kind, the *kevala-vara-ṇāṇa-damsaṇa*, coming in he started teaching. But, to be true, by all this we are not given the description of an intellectual development in our sense.