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 68

MAHAVIRA AND HIS TIMES evidence, that in my forthcoming book, The Oxford History of India, now being printed, I have inserted earlier periods for the Saisunagas and Nandas," 1 but now the very person (Jayaswal) who was rightly relied upon to this extent by Mr Smith, and who deserves greater credit for keeping up to his conviction, has more or less completely altered his first reading of the inscription after working at it for a pretty long time. Coming to Jayaswal, he says: "It also proves that to have Jina images about or rather before 450 B.C. means that the date of Mahavira's Nirvana must be what we get from the various Jaina chronological data read with the Puranic and Pali material, which all harmonise in fixing it to be 545 B.C...,"2 This sounds rather strange There is no reason why this King Nanda referred to here should be identified particularly with Nandivardhana, the Saisunaga whose era has been identified by Jayaswal with the Nanda era referred to above on the basis of Alberuni and other historical grounds. 8 This King Nanda, as we shall see in our next chapter, is, according to Dr Charpentier, better identified with one of the Nine Nandas, the first of whom "seems not to be very unfavourably judged by Hemacandra." 4 If this identification is accepted, the historical period of having Jaina images would be somewhere in the very beginning of the fourth century B.C. Even granting that this King Nanda is to be identified with Nandivardhana, whose date, according to Jayaswal, comes to about 457 B.C, there is no historical fallacy committed or any Jaina tradition disregarded if we say that there must have been Jaina images about or rather before 450 B.C. There is no reason why, just because of this, the Nirvana of Malavira cannot be somewhere about 467 B.C., and should go so far back as 545 B.C., because, according to so many traditions, whether right or wrong, image-worship is no new development in the Jaina church. But the fixing of 545 B.C. as the date of Mahavira's Nirvana is nothing else but disregarding some of the real historical facts 1 Smith, J.R.A.S, 1918, p 647. + Jayaswal, op. cit, p. 246 This date of Jayaswal is based also on the chronological facts that he has worked out after consulting the Pail, Puranic and Burmese traditions Cf. J.BO.RS,1,P 114. * Jayzwal, J.BO.R.S, Wu, PP 240-241. Charpentier, op at, pp 171-772 e h a 744a..fu... TULIGHT ... RUTH # ..Jirala, stit 129, P 210