Aspects of Brahmanical Influence On Jaina Mythology

Author(s): Shaktidhar Jha
Publisher: Bharat Bharti Bhandar

Page 87

The Manus and their periods denizens of the celestial world or to those of the Ultarakurus22 and Harivarşa 23
It is during that golden age that all the thirteen Manus are said to have been born The description of their periods is very important from the stand-point of evolution of the world. The account of different ages of the world is based on the assumption that the universal condition goes on deteriorating and in the last stage of Avasarpint reaches a state of complete perversion and depredation Thus the account on this plane, too, is in substantial agreement with those in the epics and Puranas of the Brahmanical school, for the Brahmanıcal works also tell the same story of gradual decline in moral and spiritual values through the four ages, viz Ksta, Treia, Doapara and Kalz 24 And, a perusal of the accounts of various Manvantaras including tiac of Nabhi proves beyond doubt that the accounts in question have their incontroveruble prototype in the epic-Purānic description of the Tretā age as well as that of the Brahmanıcal Manvanlaras excluding the periods of the first and the seventh Manus
Now, the Brahmanıcal and the Jaina accounts, compared together and with the Buddhist versions will show that
22 In all the Jaina Puranas the account of the ha-py and harmonious
life in the first two stages begins with the remark that the carcfree life of mankind resembled that of men of the Ullarakurus But to our knowledge the Jaina sources do not furnish any independcot account of the naturc of life in the said land It is only from the description of that earliest period that we can form an idca as to what type of lufc would have been in that mythical land But the state of life as described in thc Purānas under investigation shows striking correspondence with that of mankind in the Ultarakurus of the Brahmanical epic Purānic accounts Under thc circumstances it will not be un reasonable to hold that the Jaina Purānic account of the carly stages of Avasarpinius principally based on thc Ullarakurus as described in the Mahābhārata and the Puranas of the Brāhmanical school See MBh VI. 7 2-12, Vāgu p 45 11-40, Alāri andeya 59 18-25a, Malsya 113 69-77 , Comp VPC, 3.86-41, RPC, 3 49-63, JHV, 7 04-108 ;
AP, 3 24-50 23 Vāgu, 46 8-18, Márka 60 4-6 24 MBh III 149 11-40, chaps 189, 190, l'hyn, chap VIII, Mārka
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