RELIGIOUS SECTS OF THE HINDUS. 261 



dred; Bddis, controversialists, four hundred ; Srdvakas, the male laity, one 

 lack and fifty-nine thousand; and Srdvikds, female hearers of the word, 

 double that number, or three lacks and eighteen thousand. The only 

 Ganadharas present, were Gautama and Sudherma, the other nine having 

 attained felicity, or having died before their master. 



The period of his liberation having arrived, Mahavira resigned his 

 breath, and his body was burned by Sakra and other deities, who divided 

 amongst them such parts as were not destroyed by the flames, as the 

 teeth and bones, which they preserved as reliques ; the ashes of the pile 

 were distributed amongst the assistants : the gods erected a splendid, 

 monument on the spot, and then returned to their respective heavens. 

 These events occurred on the day of new moon, in the month Kdrtik, when 

 Mahavira was seventy-two years of age, thirty of which were spent in 

 social duties, and the rest in religious avocations, and he died two hun- 

 dred and fifty years after the preceding Jina, Parswanath : no other date 

 is given, but in the passage in the prophetic strain above alluded to, it is 

 mentioned that Kumara Pala will found Anahilla Patau, and become the 

 disciple of Hemachamdra, one thousand six hundred and sixty-nine 

 years after the death of Mahavira. 



The conversion of Kumara Pala occurred about A. D. 1174, and 

 consequently the last Jina expired about five hundred years before the 

 Christian era. According to other authorities, the date assigned to this 

 event, is commonly about a century and a half earlier, or before Christ 

 six hundred and sixty-three,* but Hemachandra is a preferable guide, 



* Colonel Mackenzie, on the information of the Belligolu Jains, says Verddhamana at- 

 tained beatitude 2404 years btfore the year 1801, which is 663 years before Christ. Mr. Cole- 

 brooke observes, that the Jains of Bengal reckon Verddhamana to have lived 580 years before 

 Vikramaditya, which is A. C. 636. 



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