that SiddMrtha was but a baron ; for he is frequently called merely Kshatriya his wife TrlralA is, so far as I remember, never styled Devi, queen, but always Kshatriya/rf. Whenever the GVz&trzka Kshatriyas are men- tioned, they are never spoken of as SiddMrtha's S^mantas or dependents, but are treated as his equals. From all this it appears that SiddMrtha was no king, nor even the head of his clan, bvit in all probability only exercised the degree of authority which in the East usually falls to the share of land- owners, especially of those belonging to the recognised aristocracy of the country. Still he may have enjoyed a greater influence than many of his fellow-chiefs ; for he is recorded to have been highly connected by marriage. His wife Trurala was sister to /Te/aka, king of VaLrfQl 1 . She is called Vaidehi or VidehadattSL 2 , because she belonged to the reigning line of Videha.
Buddhist works do not mention, for aught I know, /Te/laka, king of Vawali ; but they tell us that the government of Vesali was vested in a senate composed of the nobility and presided over by a king, who shared the power with a viceroy and a general-in-chief 3 . In <7aina books we still have traces of this curious government of the for in the Nirayavali Sutri 4 it is related that king whom Ktmika, al. A^ta^atiu, king of TTampA, prepared to attack with a strong army, called together the eighteen confederate kings of K&ji and Ko^ala, the Li//avis and Mallakis, and asked them whether they would satisfy Kftni- ka's demands or go to war with him. Again, on the death of Mah&vira the eighteen confederate kings, mentioned above, instituted a festival to be held in memory of that event 5 , but no separate mention is made of /$Te/aka, their pretended sovereign. It is therefore probable that ^Te/aka was simply one of these confederate kings and of equal power with them. In addition to this, his power was checked by the
1 See Kalpa Sutra, my edition, p. 113. JSTe/aka is called the maternal uncle of Mahavira.
* See Kalpa Sutra, Lives of the Ginas, no; Afcaranga Stitra II, 15, 15. 8 Tumour in the Journal of the Royal As. Soc. of Bengal, VII, p. 992.
* Ed. Warren, p. 27.
5 See Kalpa Sfltra, Lives of the Ginas.
Introduction. X111
constitution of Vesili. So we are enabled to understand why the Buddhists took no notice of him, as his influence was not very great, and, besides, was used in the interest of their rivals. But the Gainas cherished the memory of the maternal uncle and patron of their prophet, to whose influence we must attribute the fact, that VaLr&li used to be a stronghold of <7ainism, while being looked upon by the Buddhists as a seminary of heresies and dissent.
We have traced the connection of Mah&vira's family not out of mere curiosity, which indiscriminately collects all historical facts however insignificant in themselves, but for the reason that the knowledge of this connection enables us to understand how Mahclvira came to obtain his success. By birth he as well as Buddha was a member of a feudal aristocracy similar to that of the Yadavas in the legends about Krzsh^a, or that of the Rajpoots of the present day. In feudal societies family ties are very strong and long remembered \ Now we know for certain that Buddha at least addressed himself chiefly to the members of the aris- tocracy, that the Gainas originally preferred the Kshatriyas to the Br^hmans 2 . It is evident that both MaMvira and Buddha have made use of the interest and support of their families to propagate their order. Their prevalence over other rivals was certainly due in some degree to their con- nection with the chief families of the country.
Through his mother Mah&vira was^related to the ruling^ dyna*sty in Magadfia ; for ATe/aka's daughter^ ^ ellanci 3 waslnamed to"3emya Bimbhis&ra 4 or Bimbis^ra, king of Magadha, and residing in R^agrzha. He is praised by the Gainas and Buddhists, as the friend and patron of both
1 The Gainas are very particular in stating the names and gotras of Mahavtra's relations, of whom they have recoided little else. Kalpa Stitra, Lives of the Ginas, 109.
8 See Kalpa Stitra, Lives of the Ginas, 17 and 18.
8 See NiraySvali Sfttra, ed. Warren, p. 22. She is commonly called by the Buddhists Vaidehi ; in r Thibetan life of Buddha her name is Srlbhadra, which reminds us of the name of -STeteka's wife Subhadra. See Schiefher in M^moires de T Academic Imp&iale de St. Petersbourg, tome iv, p. 253.
4 He is usually called only Seniya or reika ; the full name is given in the Dasasrutaskandha, Weber, Ind. Stud. XVI, p. 469.
XIV GAINA StJTRAS.
Mahavira and Buddha. But Kftnika or, as the Buddhists call him, A^&ta^atru l , his son by ATellani, the Videhan lady, showed no favour to the Buddhists in the earlier part of his reign ; only eight years before Buddha's death he became his patron. We should go wrong in believing him to have sincerely been converted. For a man who avowedly murdered his father 2 , and waged war against his grand- father 3 , is not likely to have cared much about theology. His real motive in changing his religious policy we may easily guess. He planned to add Videha to his dominions, just as his father had added Ahga to his kingdom of Maga- dha ; he therefore built the fort at Pdtoligrdma 4 , in order not to repel but subdue the Vag^ians or Wz/fis, a tribe of Videha, and at last fixed a quarrel on the king of Vai^alJ, his grandfather. As the latter was the maternal~ur7cle of Mafravira, Ajrataratru, by attacking this patron of the ainas, lost in some degree their sympathy. Now he resolved on siding with their rivals, the Buddhists, whom he formerly had persecuted as friends of his father's, whom, as has been said above, he finally put to death. We know that A^-atajratru succccdod_jn conqyjaing^auali, and that hejaid the foundation of the empire of th c_Nandas a nd Mauryas. With the extension of the limits of the empire oTMagadha a new field was opened to both religions, over which they spread with great rapidity. It was probably this auspicious political conjuncture to which Gainism and Buddhism chiefly owed their success, while many similar sects attained only a local and temporal importance.
The following table gives the names of the relations of Mah^vira, or, as we should call him when not speaking of
1 That the same person is intended by both names is evident from the fact that according to Buddhist and Gaina writers he is the father of Udsiyin or Udayibhaddaka, the founder of Pifaliputra in the records of the Gainas and Brahmans.
2 The story is told with the same details by the Buddhists ; see Kern, Der Buddhismus und seine Geschichte in Indien, I, p. 249 (p. 195 of the original), and the Gainas in the Nirayivalt Sfttra.
8 See above.
* MaMparinibbana-Sutta I, 26, find MahAvagga VI, 18, 7 seq.
Introduction. Xv
him as a prophet of the Gainas, Vardhamftna or 6V&- trzputra 1 :
Suparsva Siddhartha Trivia or -RTe/aka Subhadia I Viclehadatta king of Vaisali I
I I I I
Nandivardhana Vardhamana Sudarsana Bimbisara J^ellana married to king of Magadha I
Ya^oda I
m to Kunika
Gamali |
| Udayin, founder of Seshavatf. Pa/ahputra.
I do not intend to write a full life of Mah^vira, 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. Vardhamana was, like his father, a KL?yapa. 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 RdrfM. After the first year he went about naked 2 . From the end of these twelve years of pre- paratory self-mortification dates Vardhamclna's Kevaliship. Since that time he was recognised as omniscient, as a prophet of the Gainas, or a Tirthakara, and had the titles G*ina, Mahcivira, Sec., which were also given to S&kyamuni. 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 counte- nanced chiefly by those princes with whom he was related through his mother, viz. ^Te/aka, 6Yemka, andJKjftnika, the
1 Nataputta in Pali and Prikrit. The Buddhists call him Niga/Aa NStaputta, i. c. Gwitriputra the Nirgrantha or Gaina monk.
9 This period of his life is the subject of a sort of ballad incorporated in the AHranga Sfltra (I, 8).
kings of Videha,Magadha, a^id.Anga._JQi the towns which lay in these parts he spent Inmost all the rainy seasons during his spiritual career \ though he extended his travels as far west and north as 5rAvastf and the foot of the Hima- laya. The names of his chief disciples, the eleven Gawa- dharas or apostles of the 6ainas, as detailed in the Kalpa Sfitra (List of Sthaviras, i), are given without any varia- tion by both divisions of the church, the 6"vetimbaras and Digambaras. Of the details of Mahavira's life, men- tioned in the canonical books, his rivalry with, and victory over Go^ala, the son of Makkhali, and lastly, the place of his death, the small town Papa, deserve to be noticed. Nor are we by any means forced to rely on the tradition of the Crainas only, since for some particulars we have the testi- mony of the Buddhists also, in whose writings Mahavira is mentioned under his well-known name Nataputta, as the head of the Niga;*//fcas or Gaina monks and a rival of Buddha. They only misstated his Gotra as that of Agni- vauydyana ; in this particular they confounded him with his chief apostle Sudharman, the only one of all the apostles who survived him and took the lead in the church after his teacher's death. Mahavira being a contemporary of Buddha, they both had the same contemporaries, viz. Bimbisara and his sons, Abhayakumira and A^atajatru, the Li//avis and Mallas, Go^ala Makkhaliputra, whom we accordingly meet with in the sacred books of either sect. From the Buddhist Pi/akas it appears, as we have seen above, that Mahdvira's followers were very numerous in VaLrali, a fact that is in perfect accordance with what the Gainas relate about his birth in the vicinity of that town, and which at the same time well agrees with his connection with the chief magistrate of the place. In addition to this, some tenets of the Niga/^as, e.g. the Kiriyavdda and the belief that water is inhabited by souls, are mentioned in the sacred books of the Buddhists, in perfect accordance with
1 See Kalpa Sdtra, Lives of the Ginas, 122; JSTampa, 3 ; Vaisalf, 1 2 ; Mithila, 6 ; Rfi^agriha, 14 ; Bhadrik&, a ; Alabhikd, i ; Panitabhtimi, i ; Sravastt, i ; Pp, i. All these towns, with the exception of Pamtabhdmi, tfravastf, and perhaps Alabhikfc, lay within the limits of the three kingdoms mentioned in the text.
Introduction. Xvi I
the <9aina creed. Lastly, the Buddhists are correct in
assuming the town P&p as the scene of Nataputta's
death.
Comparing this outline of Mahavira's life with that of Buddha's, we can detect little or nothing in the former which qan be suspected as having been formed after the latter by tradition. The general resemblance between the lives of both is due to their being lives of ascetics, which from the nature of the things must present some uniformity, which certainly will appear greater to the mind of a European historian of our times than to that of an ancient Hindu. Some names of Mahavira's relations are similar to those of Buddha's : the former's wife was Ya^oda, the latter's Ya.ro- dhara ; the former's elder brother was Nandivardhana, the latter's step-brother Nanda ; Buddha's name as a prince was Siddhartha, which was the name of Mahavira's father. But if the similarity of these names proves anything, it proves no more than that names of this description were much used then among the Kshatriyas, as surely they were at all times l . Nor is it to be wondered at that two Ksha- triyas should have founded sects in opposition, or at least in disregard to the authority of the Brahmans. For, as I shall try to prove in the sequel, the Kshatriyas were the most likely of all to become what the Brahmans would call ' untrue ascetics,'
