Comprehensive History Of Jainism

SR No.: 022803
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Aseem Kumar Chatterjee
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 360
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 28 MB

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A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF JAINISM
terracotta figurine from Mohenjo-daro.145 Where this image was found is not known; but it was certainly from some site in western India, where Jainism was introduced around 300 BC.
In a number of pre-Christian and post-Christian non-Jaina texts there are frequent references to the Jainas. Bhāsa, 146 Subandhu, 147 and Bāņa!48 frequently refer to the Jainas. It appears from Subandhu's Vāsavadatta! 49 that the Digambara Jainas were looked upon as the bitterest rivals of Hindu philosophers. This work was in existence in the early Gupta period and is mentioned by Bāņa. The poet Bāna, had some regard for the Jainas as one Jaina Viradeva was a childhood friend of this great writer.150 We can therefore assign Vīradeva to the last quarter of the sixth century AD. In the Kādambarīl51 Bāņa openly praises the Jainas for their magnanimity. References to the Jainas in the Bhāgavata,152 Brahmānda,153 etc. also provide indirect evidence of its popularity in the early Christian period.
Varāhamihira (early sixth century) refers to the mode of fashioning a Jina image in his Brhatsamhitā. 154 The later Pāli works of Sri Lanka also refer to the Jainas.
Quite a good of number of Jaina writers flourished during this period. Padalipta, the author of the missing Tarangavatī, a Prākrta poem, probably composed in the śātavāthana period, 155 was one of the earliest Jaina poets. I have already referred to Vimala, who also lived in the first century AD. The Vasudevahindīl56 is definitely a product of the Gupta period. Among Jaina philosophers of north India of this period I may mention VỊddhavādī, Mallavādi, Jinabhadragani, and will have something more to say about them in a separate chapter.
It should here be pointed out that, unlike Buddhism, the Jaina religion did not receive any large scale princely patronage in its early stages. The only exception was Khāravela, who also patronized Brahmanical Hinduism. The Buddhists, on the other hand, did all they could to befriend princes and potentates. Jainism hov ever appealed directly to the masses and gradually became popular in almost every part of India by the beginning of the Christian period.