Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/83

 tried their utmost, but, of course, the human wife could not reach so far, whereas the demon wife did and thus showed her real character. Vimaḷanātha had six hundred companions to mokṣa. Thirty sāgara of time had passed before his birth, and his height was sixty bow-shots.

There was an endless (ananta) thread which lay about quite powerless in Ayodhyā; but after the king's wife had given birth to the fourteenth Tīrthaṅkara, it became endued with power to heal diseases; this event, combined with the fact that his mother had seen an endless necklace of pearls, decided the child's name. Anantanātha's birth was divided from his predecessor's death by nine sāgara of time, and his height was fifty bow-shots. His sign is the hawk, or, according to the Digambara, the bear.

The fifteenth Tīrthaṅkara was born four sāgara of time after Anantanātha's Nirvāṇa, and his height was only forty-five bow-shots. His parents were the Rajput king and queen of Ratnapurī, and before his birth they exhibited such new zeal in the performance of their religious duties (dharma), that the child was given the name of Lord of Religion, Dharmanātha. He attained mokṣa with eight hundred monks. His sign is a thunderbolt.

After the nirvana of the ninth Tīrthaṅkara, Suvidhinātha, the Jaina faith disappeared until the birth of the tenth Tīrthaṅkara, who revived it; on his nirvana it disappeared again, but was revived on the birth of the eleventh; and this continued to be the case until the birth of Śāntinātha, the sixteenth Tīrthaṅkara, after which it never disappeared again. The parents of this Tīrthaṅkara ruled in Hastināpura three sāgara of time after Dharmanātha's nirvāṇa. It happened that plague was raging. Before Śāntinātha's birth, however, his mother was able to stay the course of the pestilence by sprinkling the sufferers with water; so when the child was born he was called Śāntinātha, or Lord of Peace (śānti). The special interest