Agam 24 Chhed 01 Nishith Sutra Part 01 Sthanakvasi

Author(s): Amarmuni, Kanhaiyalal Maharaj
Publisher: Amar Publications

Page 29

is expressed by Dr. Dutta : "The Brahmanical Sannyāsis, the Buddhist Bhikkhus and the Jaina Sramaņas all belonged to the same ancient society of wandering religious mendicants, and it is obvious that among all these sects there should subsist a certain community of ideas and practices.' Dr. Dutta aptly remarks, “religious mendicancy in India cannot, in fact, be traced to the materialisation of any one philosophic idea."
The scholars like Jacobi, Buhler and Carpentier hold the view that Jain and Buddhistic rules of monastic life are the copies of Brahmanism. The view somewhat an anti thesis of this one, is stated by scholars like Oldenberg, Dutta, and Upadhye. They maintain that Sramanism was the outcome of non-Aryan thought current that was prevalent in the eastern India in contrast to the one prevailing with the Western Aryans who were not much interested in monastic life. Upadliye is more objective when he expresses his view about the priority of Sramanic culture in India over the Vedic Religion : "Before the advent of the Aryans in India, we can legitimately imagine that a highly cultivated society existed along the fertile banks of the Ganges and Jumna, and it had its religicus teachers. Vedic texts have always looked with some antipathy at the Magadhan country where Jainism and Buddhism flourished ; and these religions owe no allegiance to the Vedic authorities. The gap in the philosophical thought at the close of Brāhmana period has necessitated the postulation of an indigenous stream of thought which must have been influenced by the latter. I have called this stream of thought by the name "Magadhan Religion”, we should no more assess the Sānkhya Jaina, Buddhistic and Ājivika tenets as mere perverted continuations of stray thoughts selected at random from the Upanişadic bed of Aryan thought current. The inherent similarities in these systems, as against the essential dissimilarities with Aryan (Vedic and Brahmanic) religion and the gaps that a dispassionate study might detect between the Vedic (including the Brāhmaṇas) and Upanişa dic thought-currents, really point to the existence of an indigenous stream of thought” (Bșhatkathākośa, Intro. p. 12; also Pravacansāra, Pref. pp. 12-13). Dutta also expresses his