Introducing Jainism

SR No.: 006956
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 90
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 9 MB

Page 28

INTRODUCING JAINISM
The Junagarh inscription (2nd cent. A.D.) gives the earliest reference to Jain monks who had attained the perfect knowledge (kevalajñāna). The inscription contains the Jain symbols like Svastikā, Bhadrāsana, Minayugala and others.
The spread of Jainism to the South is due to the migration of a Jaina community affected by the famine at the time of Maurya Candragupta which resulted in the establishment of the Digambara community in Mysore with Śravana-Belagola as its centre.
As for the doctrines of Jainism, nothing definite can be vouchsafed. We can only sum up the position of Jainism in the words of Ghatage : "Most of the features of Jainism suggestive of its primitiveness may be regarded as received by Mahāvira as they already existed. What he did was, in all likelihood, the codification of an unsystematic mass of beliefs into a set of rigid rules of conduct for monks and laymen".29 But as what Mahāvīra really preached is not known, barring a few references in the Canonical literature codified a thousand years after the death of Mahāvīra, we may assume that most of the Jaina dogmas, such as, karma-theory, soul, non-soul, influx, bondage, cessation, etc. must have been evolved after Mahāvīra and before Umāsvāmi wrote his Tattvārtha-sūtra between the first and the fifth centuries A.D.
At the time of Mahāvira, Jainism was in a formative stage, but the contribution of the Jains in the Classical Period (320-740 A.D.) was immense. It was in this age that the Jaina Canonical literature was codified, besides other developments.
It has been said above that the Svetāmbara canonical texts, as we have them today, were not composed in one day. There were several councils for that, the last being in the middle of the Classical Age (320-740 A.D.), which saw a spring time efflorescence in all spheres of life. "The creative urge of the time has contributed both character and richness to the evolution of the national mind in every succeeding
29. Majumdar, ibid., p. 420.