Marudevi's story is the most theologically startling thing in the tradition and it is told in a few lines. She is the mother of Rishabhanatha; when he renounced she grieved continuously — a thousand years in the traditional reckoning — and wept until she lost her sight. Told that her son had attained omniscience and was surrounded in glory, she set out on an elephant to see him. On the way, according to the accounts, understanding arose: she saw the nature of attachment, of what she had been grieving, and of the whole apparatus, and attained kevala jnana and then liberation there on the elephant's back, before reaching him. She is thus the first soul liberated in this half-cycle, and she achieved it without taking diksha, without vows, without fasting, without a teacher and without the tradition existing yet. Jain teachers use her to make a specific point: the vows are instrumental and not constitutive. It is the closest thing in a religion with no grace to a story about grace.