The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c9.95

c9.95

§120. The periods we have just come to mention have been connected with the ever turning time-wheel in a rather clumsy way.² The most happy period of *susama-susamā* (Jambudd. 97a; Viy. 276a) is followed by the *susamā*.³ Both and two thirds of the succeeding, the *susama-dūsamā* are essentially equal; their conditions correspond with those of the inhabitants of the intermediate continents, and they differ but in certain physical qualities of the human being and the regions, where they are reincarnated. Their want of food, for instance, manifests itself in the three periods after four, three and two days.¹ In the last third of the *susama-dūsamā* the change for the worse makes itself felt, it increases in the *dūsama-susamā* and *dūsamā* to reach its climax in the *dūsama-dūsamā*. The birth of Mahāvīra fell in the end of the *dūsa ma-susamā*;² 75 years and 8½ months later the *dūsamā* came on. Towards its end it brings the corruption of all religious and social order (comp. Ṭhāṇ. 398a),³ and with the *dūsamā* the order of the Jains, too, ceases to exist. With their names changing, her last representatives are with the Śvet. the monk Duppaṣaha, the nun Viṇhusirī (Phaggusirī) and the lay-couple of Jiṇadatta (Nāila) and Phaggusirī (Saccasiri).⁴ In the *dūsama-dūsamā* (Jambudd. 164a; Viy. 305a) all disaster aggravates beyond all bounds; the moons radiate detrimental cold, the suns scorching heat, and evil comes raining from the clouds. The earth is red-hot and impassable so that people have to hide in caves which they dare not leave but at sunrise and sun-set in order to feed on the water animals jiggering on the dry banks of the retreated rivers. These six periods or spikes (*samā*, Ṭhāṇ. 120a; 357a) are unequal in length. They measure 4, 3, 2 times 10¹⁴ *sāgarovama* (1 s.= 8,400, 000¹⁹), 10¹⁴ minus 42,000 and two times 21,000 years.⁵ They form an *osappiṇī*, i.e. the descending half of the time wheel. Then they are followed⁶—again beginning with a *dūsama-dūsamā*—by the ascending half, the *ussappiṇī*, with the same periods. By calling them both *samā*, Thāṇ. 47b may well have thought of the adj. *sama*.