Jainism in North India

SR No.: 011067
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Chimanlal J Shah
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 3 MB

Page 251

JAINISM IN NORTH INDIA of its ramifications, the Brahmadasika family, the Uccenagari1 branch and the Srigrha district community, is attested by our No. IV. The latest possible date of this inscription is Samoat 59, or AD. 128-129. The preacher then living, the venerable Siha, enumerates four spiritual ancestors, the first among whom sust have flourished about the beginning of our era. The Gang was, as me learn, much divided at that early period, and this fact speaks m favour of the statement of the tradition which places its ongm about the year 250 B.C." 2 The language of the inscriptions is a mixed dialect, consisting partly of Prakrt and partly of Sansknt words and forms. However, some of the inscriptions are said to be recorded in pure Prakrt of the Pali type. As seen before, they show exceedingly archaic characters, and merely on this ground they are taken to be as old as the second and first century B.C. Certain inscriptions of Sir A. Cunningham's collection show the Jaina Prakrt and Maharashtri forms Purovaye or Purvvaye : It is not possible to say for certain what influenced the language of these documents unless we know exactly the character of the vernacular of Central India used in the first and second centuries A.D. However it seems, as Dr Buhler observes, "to have been in some points more similar to the Jaina Prakrt and the Maharashtri than to the Pali and to the language of Asoka's edicts and of the older Andhra inscriptions." As regards the origin of this mixed dialect, with Dr Bhandarkar and others the learned scholar remarks that it is the result of halfeducated people trying to express themselves in Sanskrit, of which they possessed an insufficient knowledge and which they were not in the habit of using largely. All the Jaina inscriptions from Mathura were no doubt composed by the monks, who acted as the spiritual directors of the laymen, or by their pupils. Though no inscription has been found in which the author is named, the above interence IS warranted by the fact that numerous later documents of the same character contain the names of Yates who are said to have This geographical name seems to be identical with the fort of Unchana gora which belongs to the modern town of Bulandshaur, in the north-Western Provinces Cunningbam, ASI, NY, p 147 Buhler, op el, pp 879-880 C tatt, op cit. A.N.p 240 The schools com nected with the Kothya Gana offer no difficulty, as they agree with the corresponds names of the Kalpa-Satra C JACOBI, Kalpa-Sitra, p 82 Cunningham, ASI,1, Ins Nos II, III, VII and XI, pp 30-33 Buhler, op at, p. 376 CJ Bhandarkar, 14 , 11, p 141 202