Buddha And Jainas Reconsidered

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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THE BUDDHA AND THE JAINAS RECONSIDERED*
Johannes Bronkhorst, Lausanne
The early Buddhist Sūtras repeatedly refer to the Jainas. This has been known for more than a century. Hermann JACOBI (1895: Introduction), in particular, has shown that the position attributed to the Niganthas in the Pāli canon agree with those found in the earliest texts of the Jainas. The Buddha and his followers are on various occasions depicted as being in discussion with followers of Nigantha Nātaputta, in whom we recognise the last Tirthamkara Mahavira. Mahāvīra himself never figures in these encounters. The event of his death, on the other hand, is used as an excuse to put some order in the Buddhist doctrine in the Sangiti Sūtra. If the Buddhist tradition is to be believed, the Buddha himself, before his enlightenment, did the ascetic practices which we can identify as typical for early Jainism; he abandoned them when he came to the conclusion that they did not lead him to the desired goal. A number of verses that are part of the Pāli Buddhist canon show that the interaction between Buddhists and Jainas was frequent and, it would seem, intimate.
These more or less frequent and intimate contacts between the early Buddhists and the early Jainas left their traces on the Buddhist doctrine as recorded in the ancient Sūtras. This, at least, is what one is tempted to conclude. For these ancient texts ascribe statements to the Buddha wich directly contradict other statements of his. Moreover, some of these contradicted statements agree with positions which we know were held by the early Jainas.
Before we turn to any concrete instances of contradictory passages in the Buddhist canon that are sometimes against, and sometimes rather in favour of Jaina positions, it is important to observe that the same ambiguous position can be found with regard to other religious movements of that time. The main difference is, of course, that, whereas in the case of Jainism we have independent evidence allowing us to confirm and identify the beliefs
. I thank D. Seyfort RUEGG for some valuable observations. 1 GOMBRICH, 1995: 1078 f.