Shraman Bhagvana Mahavira Part 1

SR No.: 008001
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

Page 65

same origin, living under similar conditions, and pursuing an analogous aim.
II As regards doctrinal differences, they are not less obaracteristic. They are to be found in the fundamental dogmas and bring out in distinct relief, the originality of Jainism as compared to Buddhism.
Of course on either side, the question is as to religious atheists who have banished from their systems all idea of a Personal Creative God. A Jain gives his faith to the Jainas and the Buddhist to the Buddhas. The Jinas and the Buddhas reseinble each other and appear at determined periods. This means that both the former and the latter re-call the ancient Hindu conception of the Avatāras But while the Buddhists recognize 25 Buddhas, the Jains recognize only 24 Jinas. What does this mean is not that the Buddhists must have come little later than the Jains-and that they have enriched their system as compared with their rivals.
And even if we admit, from the point of view of mythology, the most complete analogy hetween the two religions, we will he obliged to differentiate them from the philosnphical and dootrinal points. The Buddhist theory, for instance has nothing to correspond to the Jaina conception of Knowledge and the five degrees there-of. Besides. we know how different is the system of metaphysics based on the doctrine of “may be " the Syādvă. das as opposed to the negative doctrine of the Sunya-väda. Lastly if the universe is uncreated and eternal both for the Buddhists and for the Jains, its conception as formulated by the former is totally different from that described by the latter. Here we shall consider how the Jains while rebelling against the Brāhmaṇa exclusiveness, have still retained the secularising notion of the Hindus,
We have noticed already that, it was for India, an ancient principle-universal and supreme as regards the atman or soul and the Brāhmaṇa. Every Indian System of Philosophy is per