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 [...]
After Mahavir Jina, another spiritual guru who appeared in the religious firmament of India to rectify the extreme dominance of the Brahmanical class was Gautama Buddha. Like his predecessor he too raised his voice against the ritualistic practices and tried to purify and simplify the existing religious system. Thus in course of time there grew a new religion called Buddhism. [...]
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 [...]