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Jainism
it may reasonably be inferred that Jainism was once, even Before Mabāvira, prevalent in Kaspia, Aman and the cities of Samarkand, Balkh etc.? Herodotus, the father of Greek history, in the 5th century B. C, wrote about an Indian religious sect which are nothing which had life and lived on a grain like millet. The Greek philosopher Pytha. goras ( born 580 B. C.) who was a contemporary of Mahāvīra and Buddha believed in the theory of metapsychosis, in the transmigration of souls, in the doctrine of Karma, refrained from the destruction of life and eating meat and even regarded certain vegetables as taboo. He even claimed to possess the power of recollecting his past births. These early lonian philosophers of Asia Minor, called the Orphic philɔsophers also believed in depreciation of the body in comparison with the soul.” Now all these beliefs are peculiary and distinctively Jaina and they have little in common with either the Buddhist or the Brabmanic religions. And since they were already professed in these far off lands at a time when Mahāvira and Buddha were just beginning to preach, and since there is no doubt that these ideas reached thither from India itself, there remains no doubt that they owned
1 Jain Gazette, August, 1906, p. 13.
2 The Legacy of India ( Oxford 1937 )--India in European Literature and Thought by H. G. Rawlinson, p. 3-6.—The author himself admits that these ideas seem to refer to the Jainas or Buddhists. But they could not possibly refer to Buddb ism which originated with Gautama Buddha who is believed to have died in 476 or 483 B.C. Moreover, the Buddhists, even Buddha himself never refrained from dating meat, while tabooing even certain vegetables is peculiar only to the Jainas. Same is the case with most of the other ideas mentioned above.
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