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THE AGE OF MAHĀVĪRA
Adris Banerji
The one hundred years in approximate round numbers, 600 B.C. to 500 B.C., for many reasons was a brilliant epoch, not merely in our National History, but, in the whole Asian continent. The philosophic orient was torn by great movements of heart searching, political, economic and religious integration by ferment. In India, we have become habituated in dividing the dynamic process of thinking, called HISTORY, by well defined periods and personalities. We refer to Mauryan Age-when did it commence and when did it end? With Asoka, Samudragupta, Maukharis, Harsa, the Pālas and the Pratihāras we include archaeological materials which are "detritus of contemporaneous conditions” and which require to be more precisely interpreted. We have failed to define them as centuries with definite dates in terms of their characteristics as well as their failures and frustrations. In fact, yuga dharma. This century saw a tremendous transformations in philosophical speculations, social reforms, political ideologies in a remote corner of Bhāratavarsa, which early Vedic intolerance labelled as “No man's land'. It is this century, again, that witnessed Magadha, regarded as anārya deśaḥ, launching itself in that great career of imperialism as defined by Engels; which terminated, when in the neighbourhood of Ghosrāwān (ancient Yasovarmapura of Gaud avaho) Jivítagupta II was killed and defeated by Yasovarman of Kanauj. Arabia has its holy Prophet, Israel and Jordan (former Palestine) its Jesus, China its Confucius. But in very few countries, in well clarified centuries, so many religious reformers and so many luminaries distinguished themselves, by original speculations, within a course of centuries. All their dates, again can be fixed by two great leaders: Buddha and Mahāvīra.
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