Lord Parshvanath preceded Lord Mahavira by 25O years. He was the son of King Asvasena and Queen Vama of Varanasi. At the age
of thirty he renounced the world and became an ascetic. He practiced austerities for eighty three days. on the eighty fourth day he obtained omniscience. Lord Parshvanath preached his doctrines for seventy years. At the age of one hundred he attained liberation on the summit of Mount Sammed shikaji or Sammeta (Parsnath Hills).

The four vows preached by Lord Parshvanath are: Not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, and not to own property. The vow of chastity was without a doubt, implicitly included in the last vow, but in the two hundred and fifty years that elapsed between the Nirvän of Parshvanath and the preaching of Lord Mahavir, considering the situation of that time, included the fifth vow of chastity explicitly to the existing four vows.

Thus, the number of vows preached by Lord Mahavir was five instead of four. There were followers of Lord Parshvanath headed by Keshi Kumar at the time Lord Mahavir. It is a historical fact that Kesi Kumar and Gandhar Gautam, chief disciple of Lord Mahavir met and discussed the differences. After satisfactory explanation by Gandhar Gautam, Keshi Kumar and monks and nuns of Lord Parshvanath tradition accepted the leadership of Lord Mahavira and they were reinitiated.

Lord Parasvnath’s yaksha is Dharanendra and his yakshini is Padmavati. Dharanendra is unique among the yakshas of the Tirthankaras because unlike other, he played and important role in the life of Parsvanath. Parsvapandita, a Kannada poet composed the Parsvanathapuranam in the early part of the 13th century. In the poem, he describes Dharanendra as the leader of the nagas and as the destroyer of the upasargas created by Kamatha. Kamatha was an esoteric mendicant and was practicing the `ordeal of five fires`. Parsva saved a pair of serpents from being burnt in the fire, and they eventually became his yaksha and yakshini, as Dharanendra and Padmavati.

He also gives and elaborate picture of how Dharanendra, the lord of the nether world, emerged out of earth. Kamatha, in order to disturb Parsva’s mediation had sent a great storm with the help of the evil deity, Meghamali and that caused such a downpour that the water level came up to Parsva’s nose. It was then that Dharanendra spread his enormous hood over the meditating Parsva, and his consort Padmavati held an umbrella to protect her husband in turn.