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THE SVETĀMBAR AND DIGAMBAR SECTS*
uch activity is seen both among western and eastern
pages of the past history
of the Jains, the followers of the Jinas or the Tirthankaras, their philosophy and rules of conduct. Apart from several works from the pen of educated Indian Jain or non-Jain scholars, it is very gratifying to look to the big volumes on Jainism from Germany and France containing the results of modern researches on the Digambar and Svetâmbar sects. The very words at the first sight conjure up before the casual reader the idea of nudity, or remote antiquity, and the idea of the dressed, or a later period.
But the fact is otherwise. Let us remember the period of the Vedas. Although the very word Prâkrit conveys the idea of the earlier existence and Sanskrit of the later, after undergoing change, yet there is hardly any Prâkrit literature that we come across existing before the Vedas. It has now been accepted in all quarters that Pârsvanâtha, the 23rd Tirthankara, was a historical personage and the Jain ascetics of his period and those of his predecessors' times used to wear clothes. It is only at a later period, during the regime of Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara that the fashion of discarding clothes had its origin, perhaps due to the prevalence of extreme asceticism at the time.
The word Nirgrantha, generally applied to the order of the Jains, did not literally mean without any clothes or naked, but did mean without any bond, or free from bondage or karma. It is certainly difficult to trace the cause which led our Lord Mahâvîra to embrace nudity. But so far as we can gather from the then existing circumstances it is clear that the time of Mahâvîra was a period of great religious revival, and religious speculation was at its height. A very Reproduced from The Indian Antiquary-September 1929.
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