The Life and Stories of the Jaina Savior Parçvanatha (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Life and Stories of the Jaina Savior Parçvanatha The publication in India, in the year 1912, of Bhavadevasuri's Parçvanatha Caritra opens out, for the first time, a more connected and complete account of the life and supposed teachings of the penultimate Jaina Tirthamkara, or Savior, Parçva or Parçvanatha. The lives of the twenty-two Saviors preceding Parçva are pure myth. The last Tirthamkara, Vardhamana or Nirgrantha Jnatrputra, best known as Vira or Mahavira, presumably a historical personage, regarded by the Jainas as the real founder of their religion, is supposed to have lived either in the last half of the sixth, or in the first half of the fifth century B. C. Parçvanatha is said to have preceded Vira by only 250 years, a passably moderate time, as Hindu time conceptions go. But beyond the persistent and, on the whole, unitarian character of his story and his teaching, there is little to show that he was an historical personage. Be this as it may, the doctrines ascribed to Parçva are fundamental in Jaina religion, and Parçva's personality figures large in the Jaina legend and in Jaina consciousness. The life of Parçva, including his nine pre-births, as presented in Bhavadeva's work, is the first complete account of Parçvanatha published to the Western world. And his account of Parçva's life, along with the many stories woven into it, adds to the chain of Hindu fiction books a jewel of no mean price. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.