Ahimsa and Jainism

Author(s): Vijayvallabhsuri
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

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process of assimilation the Nivrtti outlook became a common ideal both among the thinkers of the earlier Upanisads as well as among the Sramana thinkers, the fact of the Sramana thinkers (that is, Jainas and Bauddhas ) rejecting the authority of Vedas, the superiority of Brahmanas by birth and their repugnance to animal-sacrifice as a forin of worship, made them socially distinct and an antagonistic force with which the powerful and well-established Vedic sects had to contest. Here it may be noted that references in the earlier Buddhist Pitakas and Jaina Agamas as well as in Asoka's inscriptions to Sramana-Brabmana do not indicate any enmity but imply that both are regarded as respectable. It is only in Patanjali's Mahabhasya which is later than Asoka, that we find the compound Sramana -Brahmanam suggesting enmity. This may be the result of a contest of centuries between Sramanas and Brahmanas
Whether we accept this protestant -theory of the origin and rise of the Sramana or the theory of their independent pre-Vedic origin, one thing is clear that there was a great ferment of Sramana thought in or about the period of the earliest Upanisads and Aranyakas, i. e, about 800 B. C. As we have said above, the history of Jaina church also does not start with Mahavira but it goes as far back as Parsva, i. 2. 800 B. C.