Ahimsa and Jainism

Author(s): Vijayvallabhsuri
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 89

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earlier period, according to the Upanishads, Yajnavalkya had taught the doctrine of Brahman and Atman, as the permanent and absolute Being, and where Mahavira's contemporary and rival, Gotama the Buddha. was preaching his Law, which insisted on the transitoriness of all things. Jainism therefore, had to take a definite position with reference to each of these mutually exclusive doctrines, and there it will be necessary to define more explicitly.
3. The one great Truth which the authors of the Upanishads thought to have discovered, and which they are never weary of exalting, is that, underlying and upholding from within all things, physical as well as psychical, there is one absolute permanent Being, without change and with none other like it. The relation between this absolute Being and existent matter has not clearly been made out by the authors of the Upanishads, but all unprejudiced readers will agree that they looked on the phenomenal world as real. On this point the different schools of Vedantins arrived at different conclusions, which, however, need not detain us here.
4. In opposition to this Brahmanical doctrine of absolute and permanent Being Buddha taught