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Jaina Tirthamkaras and antiquity of Jainism
oceans of years ago.3 399 The Jaina tradition also holds that Rṣabha lived for two million pūrva (great) years as a prince and six million three thousand pūrva years as a king.400 According to the second school of thought, Jainism was founded by Parśvanatha, the twenty-third tirthamkara, 'who lived in the ninth-eighth century BC'.401 According to the third school of thought, Vardhamana Mahāvīra, the twenty-fourth tirthamkara, 'who lived in the sixth century BC',402 was the founder of Jainism,403 and this view persists in some quarters.*
404
An overwhelming majority of historians doubt the historicity of the first twenty-two tirthamkaras. Their arguments are as follows:
1. There is no historical evidence regarding the existence of the first twenty-two tirthamkaras;405 they, therefore, belong to mythology rather than to history.406
2. The number of Jaina tīrthamkaras is not original;407 it is canonically the same as given by the Hindus and Buddhists for their respective incarnations.408
3. The first twenty-two tirthamkaras were legendary figures who were probably introduced to balance the number of the jinas with the number of the Buddhas. 409
399.
OISJ, p. 7.
400.
HJM, p. 57.
401. JAA, I, p. 16; JOLR, p. 14.
402.
GD, p. 108; JSAI, pp. 32 ff.
403.
CHI, I, p. 153; AI (M), p. 167; IP, p. 69; EWA, VIII, p. 786; A.L. Basham, The Wonder that was India, 1954, p. 287.
404. JOLR, Preface, i. 405.
406. ERE, VII, p. 466.
407. JI, p. 36.
408.
409.
JSS, p. 9; LDJC, p. 19.
Ibid.; OISJ, p. 8.
LDJC, p. 19.
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