heritage/pavapuri.jpg · 1200×800Pavapuri, in Nalanda district, is where Mahavira gave his last sermon and attained nirvana at dawn on the new-moon day of Kartika, traditionally dated 527 BCE. On the same occasion his chief disciple Gautama Indrabhuti attained kevalgyan. The Malla and Lichchhavi chiefs of Kashi and Kosala are said to have lit lamps that night so that the light of knowledge would not go out — the origin of the Jain observance of Diwali.
The Jal Mandir stands on the spot where Mahavira's body was cremated. Tradition says his elder brother Nandivardhana raised the first shrine there. So much earth was carried away by devotees that a tank formed around it; the pond, called Kamal Sarovar, covers about 84 bighas and fills with lotus in season. A stone causeway some 600 feet long crosses the water to the white marble shrine, which enshrines Mahavira's charan paduka.
Beside the Jal Mandir the town keeps a cluster of older shrines — the village temple and the Samosharan temple among them — served by both Digambara and Svetambara communities. Some scholars have argued that the ancient Pava of the texts stood elsewhere, but Pavapuri has been the living centre of this memory for many centuries. Diwali night is kept here as Nirvana Mahotsav, and the Jain era, Vira Nirvana Samvat, is counted from that night.
