Shri Mallinath: life and stories
Following the Shwetambar tradition, chiefly Acharya Shri Hemchandracharya's Trishashti Shalaka Purush Charitra and the Kalpasutra. Kalyanak tithis are in Gujarati months.
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In a former life she was King Mahabal, who took diksha with six friends; they agreed always to keep the same tap. Mahabal secretly kept a little more than the others. That small deceit (maya) bound the karma to be born a woman, even as his great tap bound the Tirthankar naam karma.
On Fagan Sud 4 her soul came into the womb of Queen Prabhavati, wife of King Kumbh of Mithila, and she saw the fourteen great dreams.
The tradition says that her mother longed for a bed of jasmine flowers (malli), so she was named Malli. Her chinh is the kalash.
She was born on Magshar Sud 11, and the Indras celebrated the janmabhishek on Meru.
In the Shwetambar tradition the nineteenth Tirthankar was a woman, Malli Kumari, daughter of King Kumbh of Mithila. A woman Tirthankar is counted among the rare wonders (achhera) of this age. The Digambar tradition holds that Mallinath was a man.
After the Lokantik devs came to request her and a year of varshidaan, she took diksha on Magshar Sud 11 with three hundred women and three hundred men.
She attained kevalgyan on Magshar Sud 11; the devs built the samavasaran and the fourfold sangh was set up.
Malli took diksha with three hundred women and three hundred men, and attained kevalgyan on the very same day.
Six kings, her six friends of the past life, each wished to marry Malli Kumari and gathered to make war on Mithila. She had a hollow golden statue made in her own likeness, with an opening in the head, and every day put a morsel of food into it. When the kings came into the hall, she lifted the lid: a terrible stench filled the room. This, she said, is what the body holds behind its beauty. The kings remembered their past life together, and all six took diksha.
On Fagan Sud 12 Shri Mallinath attained nirvan on Sammet Shikhar.