Mahāvīra and His Teachings

Bhagvān Mahāvīra who as a great religious leader dominated sixth century B. C. in India is one of the greatest champions of dignity of man. According to him even the gods crave for human birth and are inferior to men. To have the freedom from bondage is the exclusive right of man according to him. Thus he is the first amongst other religious leaders to establish the human-right for freedom. Not only this he was the first amongst all religious leader to proclaim that all living beings have equal right to live on this earth and so no one should be killed for the selfish end. This type of non-violence was preached for the first time by him proclaiming the Sāmāyika. i.e., equality for all the living beings. This Sāmāyika was the basic vow for the aspirant for freedom. And he said that one cannot be a non-violent person unless he rejects all his possessions, i.e., he should be free from desire and attachment.

Science has made great progress in achieving the human comforts no doubt but the human community has become greedy and violent and the invention of the atom bomb in the hand of some is a great threat not only to the human society, as a whole but to all the living beings. In such circumstances it is necessary to remember our ancient preachers like Mahāvīra and Buddha who have found out the way of liberation, freedom and peace for the living beings.

In view of the fact that 2500th year of Nirvana of Bhagavān Mahāvīra, the last Tīrthaṅkara of the Jainas was due on 13th Nov. 1974, the Jaina Community established the "Bhagavān Mahāvīra 2500th Nirvana Mahotsava Samiti" in Bombay in 1968 for the celebrations of the historic event in a proper manner. Lord Mahāvīra was not the leader of the Jainas only. He was one of the many great men produced by humanity throughout the world in the past. And hence the Government of India also took interest in celebrations and sponsored the celebrations throughout India.

In order to perpetuate the memory of the celebrations it was thought proper by the said Mahotsva Samiti, that literature of abiding value should be published. So, the Samiti resolved to publish two volumes in memory of the celebrations - (1) Jainism through the ages and (2) Mahāvīra and his Teachings. - The Samiti established an Editorial Board for the purpose and one senior member of the Board, Dr. A.N. Upadhye was requested to be in charge of the correspondence with the scholars. Dr. Upadhye established the contacts with many scholars and was able to collect the articles from them for two volumes. Dr. Upadhye was keen in publishing the volumes. With the co-operation of other members of the Editorial Board he finalised the press copy of this volume and it was given to the press in March 1974. But it is a matter of great regret that the publication is delayed due to the circumstances beyond our control and Dr. Upadhye passed away on 8th Oct., 1975 without seeing the results of his scholarly labour in producing this volume. Only with heavy heart we have to remember and thank the departed scholar.

We have to thank all the contributors of this volume, which includes only the English Articles. The Hindi articles are to be published in a separate volume. We must apologise all the learned scholars who have contributed to this volume for the delay in publishing this volume. During these years our contributors - Dr. Williams, Dr. Buddha Prakash and Prof. Nilkanta Shastri passed away and we regret for them.

We have to thank Shri Bal Patil who helped Dr. Upadhye in collecting the articles and in editorial work. Our thanks are also due to Shri Ramesh D. Malvania who assisted in Editing and also shouldered very gladly the responsibility of seeing the volume through the press.

We hope that the Samiti will also publish in due course the Hindi articles of this volume and also the volume 'Jainism through the ages' which requires some articles to be added.

Editorial Board is grateful to the Mahotsava Samiti for giving an opportunity to serve a good cause.

D.D. Malvania

Member Editorial Board

Content:

I. Literature
1.	L. Alsdorf	►Jaina exegetical literature and the history of the Jaina canon
2.	K.R. Norman	Kaviliyam: A metrical analysis of the eighth chapter of the Uttaradhyayana-sutra.
3.	C. Tripathi/B. Bhatt	The barasa anuvekkha of Kundakunda
4.	V. Muthuccumaru	Jivakacintamani, a channel of Mahaviras teachings
5.	L. Sternbach	On some non-canonical subhasita collections in Jaina literature
6.	L.A. Schwarzschild	Variant forms of the locative in middle indo-aryan
7.	E. Bender	Towards a lexicon of old-gujarati
II. Religion
8.	P.S. Jaini	Bhavyatva and abhavyatva. A Jain doctrine of 'predestination'
9.	C. Caillat	Fasting unto death according to Ayaranga-sutta and to some Painnayas
10.	K.C. Sogani	Jaina mysticism
11.	S.B.P. Sinha	Relevance of Jaina ethics in the present age
12.	H. Rau	Jainism and influences from western social reformers in Gandhiji's weltanschauung
13.	G.R. Jain	Hindu and Jaina concepts of Mahapralaya versus modern science
14.	S. Gajapathi	How it works
III. Mahavira
15.	L. Smith Kremser	In Jainism, o rejoice (poem)
16.	A. L. Basham	Mahavira, the great profounder of Jainism
17.	J. Deleu	Lord Mahavira and the Anyatirthikas
18.	A. Banerji	►The Age of Mahavira
19.	A.S. Gopani	"Thus spake Mahavira"
20.	K.R. Chandra	Vardhamana Mahavira
21.	K.M. Patel	Lord Mahavira and his teachings
22.	T. Singh 'Komal'	Lord Mahavira (poem)
III. Philosophy
23.	R.N. Mukerji	The Jaina logic of sevenfold predication
24.	B.N. Jhaveri	Consideration of self in Jaina philosophy
25.	B.N. Sinha	Concept of substance in Jainism
26.	V.M. Kulkarni	Niyativada (pre-destination, fatalism, determinism). A study
V. History
27.	R. Williams	Accounts of the Jainas taken from sixteenth and seventeenth century authors
28.	B. Prakesh	The genesis of Digambara - Svetambara split
29.	V.V. Mirashi	Patronage to Jainism by the Silaharas of Kolhapur
30.	K.A.N. Shastri/ V. Ramasubramaniyam	The ascendency and eclypse of Bhagavan Mahavira's cult in the Tamil land
31.	V.G. Nair	Agasthya
32.	V.G. Nair	Antiquity of Jainism in Tamilnad
VI. Art
33.	K. Bruhn	►Further observations on the iconography of Parsvanatha
34.	H.D. Sankalia	Earliest Jaina inscription from Maharashtra
35.	N.P. Joshi	Jaina metal images in the State Museum, Lucknow
36.	M.N.P. Tiwari	Jaina images in the Archaeological Museum, Khajuraho
37.	B. Upadhyay	►Mahavira icon and Indian archaeology
38.	A. Krishna	Farther-eye in the East Indian and Nepalese painting
39.	D.N. Shukla	Is Jainism an opponent of Hinduism?