ABSTRACT
In the Kalpas¨tra there occurs the first description of the life of Pår¬va, the twenty-third fordmaker, extremely short in extent and probably modelled on that of Mahåv⁄ra.26 Pår¬va is stated to have been born in Benares, to have renounced the world and founded a community of ascetics and lay people and, after a life of one hundred years, to have attained liberation on Mount Sammeta in the Ganges basin two hundred and fifty years prior to Mahåv⁄ra, which, if the redating of the final fordmaker suggested above is correct, would place him in the eighth or seventh centuries BCE. Circumstantial evidence, including a description of his teachings in the ‘Sayings of the Seers’ (IBh 31), dictates that he can be viewed as a historical figure. While the Kalpas¨tra does not formally link Pår¬va to Mahåv⁄ra, placing his biography after that of the last fordmaker, a passing remark in the second chapter of the Åcårån≥ga, that is, not in the very earliest stratum of the biography, that Mahåv⁄ra’s parents were followers of Pår¬va and lay devotees of Jain ascetics (ÅS 2.15), has led to the widespread scholarly conclusion that Mahåv⁄ra must have renounced within Pår¬va’s ascetic lineage.
