Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 22.djvu/19

INTRODUCTION. XV him as a prophet of the Gainas, Vardhamâna or Gñâtriputra:

I do not intend to write a full life of Mahâvîra, but to collect only such details which show him at once a distinct historical person, and as different from Buddha in the most important particulars. Vardhamâna was, like his father, a Kâsyapa. He seems to have lived in the house of his parents till they died, and his elder brother, Nandivardhana, succeeded to what principality they had. Then, at the age of twenty-eight, he, with the consent of those in power, entered the spiritual career, which in India, just as the church in Roman Catholic countries, seems to have offered a field for the ambition of younger sons. For twelve years he led a life of austerities, visiting even the wild tribes of the country called Râdhâ. After the first year he went about naked. From the end of these twelve years of preparatory self-mortification dates Vardhamâna's Kevaliship. Since that time he was recognised as omniscient, as a prophet of the Gainas, or a Tîrthakara, and had the titles Gina, Mahâvîra, &c., which were also given to Sâkyamuni. The last thirty years of his life he passed in teaching his religious system and organising his order of ascetics, which, as we have seen above, was patronised or at least countenanced chiefly by those princes with whom he was related through his mother, viz. Ketaka, Srenika, and Kûnika, the