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are crazy. But if you say that Mahavira was not the real twenty-fourth, it was just a misunderstanding that for twenty-five centuries Jainas have believed in it.... And it was contested by eight people, so there is no problem, you can contest it. They were his contemporaries, so of course there is no guarantee that he was the twenty-fourth. But I will not take the responsibility now." So he has never done that, seeing the point that if he says he is the twenty-fourth they will really kill him.
But Mahavira himself had misbehaved with Makkhali Gosal, who was older than him and died before Mahavira died. And Mahavira has told a story which is so ugly that I cannot conceive where his nonviolence, his love and everything has gone.
He told a story that Makkhali Gosal died in a prostitute's home. Now, this is absolute fiction, created by him just to defame Makkhali Gosal -- that he died in a prostitute's home and that before death he told the prostitute, "I am not the real tirthankara, Mahavira is. But I was egoistic and jealous of him, hence I continued the whole of my life to fight for it. But now, at my dying moment, I want to declare the truth. And only you are here, so I am saying it to you; you declare it to others. And because my whole life I have been lying that I am the tirthankara when I was not -- and I knew it -- please make sure, because it is my last will to you, that my body should be dragged naked in the street. It should not be carried on the shoulders" -- in India, dead bodies are carried, four persons carry the body on their shoulders to the burning place -- "my body should be dragged on the road and everybody should spit on it, so that the whole city comes to know that I was a criminal."
Now this is absolute fiction, because Buddha does not mention it when he mentions Makkhali Gosal's life. He had died, so there was no competition with Buddha. He does not mention it at all, nothing of it. And there are other sources of the contemporary times which don't mention it. Makkhali Gosal died amongst his disciples -- and he had thousands of disciples, and he received the same respect as Mahavira received when he died. But that is written
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