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Lassen, as a second argument in favour of the priority of Buddhism adduces the fact that both sects worship mortál mentheir prophets-like gods and erect statues of them in their temples. As Buddhism and Jainism excepted none of the many sects, the founders of which pretended, like Buddha or Mahāvira, to Omniscience and Absolute Perfection, have continued long enough to come within the reach of our knowledge-and all or many of them may, for aught we know, have given the same divine honours to their saints as the Buddhists and Jainas did to their own prophets-it cannot be alleged that the practice of the Buddbists rather than of any other sect was imitated by the Jainas or vice verse. On the contrary, there is nothing in the notion of Buddha that could have favoured the erecting of statues and temples for his followers to worship them, but rather, much that is inconsistent with this kind of adoratiun; while the Jainas commit no inconsistency in worshipping Mabāvīra in his apotheosis. But I believe that, this worship had nothing to do with original Buddhism or Jainism, that it did not originate with the monks but with lay community when the people in general felt the want of a higher cult than that of their rude deities and demons, and when the religious development of India found in the Bhakti the supreme means of Salvation. Therefore, instead of seeing in Buddhism the originals and in the Jainas the imitators, with regard to the erection of temples and worship of statues, we assume that both sects were, independently from each other, brought to adopt this practice by the perpetual and irresistible influence of the religious development of the people in India.
The third point of resenıblance between both sects, the stress which is laid on the A-hiṁsā or not killing of living beings, will be treated more fully in the sequel.
For this reason, I quickly pass over to Professor Lassen's fourth argument viz that the Buddhists and Jainas measure the history of the world by those enormous periods of time which be wilder and awe even the most imaginative fanoy. It is true
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| SR No. | 008001 |
| Book Title | Shraman Bhagvana Mahavira Part 1 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Ratnaprabhvijay, D P Thaker |
| Publisher | Parimal Publication |
| Publication Year | 1989 |
| Total Pages | 650 |
| Language | English, Sanskrit |
| Classification | Book_English, Biography, History, & Religion |
| File Size | 15 MB |