Jainism has great antiquity. According to the Jains their religion originated in the remotest ages. They believed that Mahavira, the last Tirthankara was preceded by twenty-three other prophets. Mahavira was the twenty-fourth one. The historicity of the first twenty-two Tirthankaras starting from Rishabhnath to Neminath is doubtful. They are all shadowy figures wrapped up in mythology. The twenty-third Tirthankar Parsvanath [...]
Vardhamana Mahavira Vardhaman Mahavira was the 24th and last Tirthankara of Jainism. He flourished about 250 years after the death of parsva. He was born in Kundagrama a suburb of Vaisali (modern Muzaffarpur district in Bihar) in 599 B.C. (according to some in 540 B.C.). His father Siddhartha was the head of a Kshatriyadan called the Jantrikas and his mother [...]
Jaina literature and the growth of Vernacular Language: Jainism had played a pivotal role in the development of the language of the country. Sanskrit and Pali have been the medium of writings and preaching's of Brahmanas and Buddhists. But the Jains gave a definite literary shape to some vernaculars for the first time. image source: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Sankhitta_Sangheyani_Cosmography.jpg Mahavira preached [...]