________________
TRADITION AND BACKGROUND
The Bhāgavat Purāṇa has noticed Risabhadeva with great respect To quote
د
"For running the administration of the world, Risabhadeva placed his son Bharata on the throne, and himself became completely detached to propagate bhakti (devotion), jnana (knowledge) and vairagya (detachment), the religion of the great Seers (Paramahansas) who themselves had attained the height of non-involvement and detachment."5
Dr Budhprakash, D.Litt., writes in his book Indian Religion and Culture in part, as follows:
In the list of a thousand names of Visnu contain the Mahabharata are included Sreyansa, Ananta, Dharma, Santi and Sambhava, and in that of Siva are included Risabha, Ajita, Ananta and Dharma Both Visnu and Siva have been given a name as Subrata All these are the names of the Tirthankaras seein that in the atmosphere of synthesis of the Mahabharata, effort was made to present the Tirthankaras as Visnu and Siva and thus establish the religious unity in the country This shows that the tradition of the Tirthankaras is very old.""
Major-General J C R Furlong, in his book, The Short Study in Science of Comparative Religion, writes:
"Innumerable number of years prior to Jesus Christ, Jainism was widely spread in India When the Aryans had reached Central India, thev found that the Jainas were already there "7
Expressing his views on 'Jainism in Bihar', P C Roy Choudhury
writes:
"Some modern writers have indulged in a common-place error by writing that Jainism was born out of the widespread discontent against the Brahmanical religion This wrong notion originated another which was that Vardhamana Mahavira was the founder
5 Srimad Bhagavat, 5/5/28
6 Tirthankara Vardhamana, p 15
7 Jain Dharm, p 11.
