Unbelievably Long Lives of the Tirthankaras

[Scourge of the Gods]

This is, to me, one of the most fascinating aspects of Jainism. The official founder of Jainism, Mahavira, died at the age of 72. However, that is considered to be a short lifespan by Jains because they believe that the universe began in a state of perfection and gradually degraded over time. Therefore, the 23 Tirthankaras who preceded Mahavira all had much longer lifespans than he had, the longest being the first Tirthankara, Rishaba, who supposedly lived to the mind-boggling age of 4 quintillion years. My question to members of this forum who are Jains or who have a knowledge of Jainism is this: do Jains literally believe that the Tirthankaras, as well as other human beings who were alive during those time periods, really lived to such advanced ages? I often suspect that perhaps the ancient Indians had a different way of keeping track of time, and maybe there are mistranslations of lifespans and dates in history when people try to convert them into our modern Western calendar. I would not, however, didcount the possiblity that Jains literally believe in those long lifespans since many Jews and Christians, for example, believe that many people in ancient times lived to be several hundreds of years old. The difference is that in order for the lifespans of the Tirthankaras to be real, the universe would have to be much older than scientists say it is. This is in stark contrast to many fundamentalist Christians who believe that the universe is much younger than scientists say it is. This brings me to my second question. Exactly what number do Jains put on the age of our present universe? Rishaba lived to be four quintillion years old and he wasn't even the first human being. Finally, how does Hinduism compare with Jainism concerning their beliefs in ancient lifespans and the age of the universe? Thanks in advance to anyone who can proide any insight into this topic.

 

[anant]

Age of Tirthankaras:

I am a Jain and I do agree that this is difficult to comprehend at the same time it is difficult to logically argue on this. It is not just age but also the body size of earlier tirthankaras fall into similar category.

I think one can do the following:

a) Take this on faith.
b) Think of it as a mistake in interpretation/miscalculation of texts.
c) Try finding out the truth. Not sure if this would be possible.
d) Jainism also says that even the Tirthankaras who are all knowing cannot express all facets of truth due to:
1) limitation of language
2) limitation in understanding of others

Age of Universe:

Jainism believes that the Universe(s) always existed and will always continue to exist with no creator/destroyer of the Universe(s). It does divide the time into cycles (similar to yugas in Hinduism) called aaras and the aaras move in cycles from 1 - 6 - 1 - 6 and so on. Further Jainism does believe in existence of life in other planets.

Hinduism on ancient lifespan:

The interesting to note here is that even Hinduism has similar notions of life span and body characterstics of Rama and others. Lord Rama ruled for 11,000 years and his father Dashratha lived for 60000 years.

My personal opinion here: In my opinion the cosmological facts/events as described by Jainism and Hinduism is very different from science. I would go by science as that appears closest to what I think about Universe.