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be, because the kingdoms of those days were just small estates of landlords. There were some two thousand kings in India at that time, so how big can these kingdoms have been? It cannot be bigger than a small district of today. So, Mahavira's father was just an average landlord, he was not a great king. Had Mahavira not been born as his son, nobody would have mentioned him in history. But Jainas ascribe to him enormous wealth -- with such a big empire, so many horses, so many elephants and so on. The number of horses and elephants they recount, there could not have been enough space for them to even stand in his small kingdom. And so many gems and diamonds -- all bullshit!
But there is a hidden truth in all this, and that truth is that the mind of a Jaina does not want to agree to the idea that his tirthankara may come from a poor family. It is worth knowing this truth. "My tirthankara must have been a chakravartin, a world ruler. How could he come from an ordinary background?" Then the false aura of enormous wealth is created around him.
And when Mahavira speaks, listeners rush to occupy the seats which are spread thousands of miles around him, because if there are only ten or twenty listeners the tirthankara lacks greatness. No, the audience numbers billions and trillions. This is impossible though. Today it is possible because of modern technology, and hundreds of thousands of people can listen simultaneously. But in Mahavira's time this was not possible. Inevitably Mahavira spoke to small groups. But the Jaina mind cannot agree to this, because the value lies in numbers! How many people? We do not care at all about truth or falsehood.
The devotee and the enemy, they never care about truth. Devotion speaks falsely, exaggerates things. The enemy also tells lies and exaggerates. In love and in hate we forget everything. The river starts flowing unchecked, breaking all barriers of truth and lie. We do the same about Buddha, and the same about Rama or Krishna. What we attribute to them bears no relation to what they actually had or had not, it only indicates about our criterion: if they had nothing, we wouldn't accept them. We recognize the vastness
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