tirthankaras/tk-24-mahavira.jpg · 1200×1600Born into the Jnatri clan of the Vajji confederacy — a republic rather than a kingdom. His father was a chieftain; his mother Trishala was related to Chetaka, ruler of Vaishali. The Acharanga Sutra records that his parents followed Parshva's teaching.
He renounced at thirty. The oldest parts of the Acharanga describe the twelve and a half years that followed: he was beaten, attacked by dogs, taken for a spy and refused shelter, and he never retaliated. The best-known episodes are the serpent Chandakaushika, whose venom he bore without moving and who was transformed by it; the cowherd who drove spikes into his ears; and the god Sangama's long campaign of torments.
The most human episode is Chandanbala. Mahavira vowed to accept food only under conditions so specific they amounted to not eating: from a princess sold into slavery, shackled, head shaved, weeping, standing at a threshold, offering boiled lentils from a winnowing basket, on the third day of her fast. Months passed. Chandanbala was exactly that person — and when he turned away because she was not weeping, she wept, and the vow was complete. She became the head of the order of nuns, which by tradition grew to 36,000 women, alongside 14,000 monks.
Omniscience came under a sal tree on the bank of the Rijubaluka river. At Pava, eleven learned brahmins who had gathered for a sacrifice came to refute him and instead became his eleven ganadharas, led by Indrabhuti Gautama — each, by tradition, holding a private doubt about the soul, rebirth or karma, which Mahavira named before they could speak.
He taught for thirty years and attained nirvana at Pavapuri on the new-moon night of Kartika. The assembled kings lit lamps because the light of knowledge had gone out — the Jain meaning of Diwali. Gautama, away on an errand, heard at dawn; the grief broke his last attachment, and he attained omniscience that morning.
