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The Oldest Living Religion
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figure or some prehistoric person.” In another place he says, " The first of these (Jaina Tirthankaras) was Rsabhadeva after whose son charata's name this country came tobe known as I bāratavarsa”. I There thus remains no It ason to doubt the truth of this tradition and the historicity of Emperor Bharata, the son of Lord Rsabha, who was the first Cakravartin of the Jaina tradition - the first Indian king who was a universal conqueror and world. potentate, particularly when his existence is well corroborated by the different traditions.
As a matter of fact, the Hindu history of India is. generally made to begin from the advent of the Aryans - into this country, just as the British or European bistory of India used to begin from Alexander's invasion. And so every event and person prior to or outside the pale of the Vedic religion and culture is regarded unbistorical or at best prehistonic. The Rgveda is the first and earliest of the Vedas and is supposed to be the oldest book in the world's library. It is believed by the majority of scholars, both eastern and western, to have been composed in the form of isolated hymns ranging over a long period, sometimes between 4500 B. C. and 2.00 or 1500 B. C. The advent of the Vedic Aryans through the Northwest Frontiers of India is also dated to about 3500 to 2500 B.C.2 Lord Rsabha and his son Bharata, the great emperor are obviously much anterior to these times. Prof. S. Srikantha Sastri takes back the antiquity of Jaina tradition to at least 20,000 B.C. and asserts that the original home of Jainism was certainly some where in Bhāratavarşa, -
1. BIR.-p. 146-343.
2 Tilak—(Arctic Home of the Aryans and Orian), Jacobi, Winternitz, Max Muller, Majumdar, Rangacharya etc, etc.
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