The Moment the Mahāvīra Attained Omniscience

Abstract

In the accounts of the Mahāvīra’s life in the first suyakkhaṃdha of the Āyāra(ṃga) and the Jinacaritra several turning points are mentioned. As will be shown, the periods between these turning points are delimited in a highly exact way, which accounts for the intercalary months. However, the modern translators have failed to recognize the terms involved. And so have the authors of the texts themselves and the subsequent copyists, which in the case of Āyāra I becomes clear from an interpolation and in that of the Jinacaritra from the introduction of an alternative system of dating the main events in the Mahāvīra’s life. The latter system is also found in the second suyakkhaṃdha of the Āyāra, which contains an account of the Mahāvīra’s life which, as will be shown, might well have been based on the one in the Jinacaritra. The exact calculations lend the biography in Āyāra I the character of a handbook providing strict rules for prospective monks. The author of the Jinacaritra, who was unaware of the function of the calculations, produced instead a veritable hagiography. It will be argued that while the phenomenon of intercalarity must have been widely known, knowledge of the calculations seems to have been passed on mainly in royal administrative circles involved in taxation and revenue collection. This is a world from which the ascetic monks, however learned, must have been far removed. This might explain the misunderstandings visible in the Jinacaritra and, with it, Āyāra II. The authors of what is by general agreement the earliest version, in Āyāra I, seem instead to have been familiar with the work carried out in these administrative centres.