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A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF JAINISM
mentaries.72 According to them the original canon was forgotten after Lohācārya, who according to them died 565 years after Mahāvīra. It is interesting to note that Vimala's Paumacariyam shows no acquaintance with the Digambaras; and this work was written according to its own testimony 530 years after Mahāvīra's nirvāṇa.
However, the detailed and biased account regarding Śivabhūti given in the Śvetambara cūrṇī texts can be dismissed offhand.
Now, the name Śivabhūti is not absent in early Digambara works. The Bhāvapāhuda,73 ascribed to Kundakunda, a work probably written around AD 300, refers to the monk Śivabhuti who is probably no other than the Śivabhuti of the Svetambara commentaries. He is also mentioned in Devasena's Ārādhanāsāra," written in the tenth century AD.
There is a Digambara tradition according to which Aryan Mankhu was one of the original authors of the Digambara canon. He is placed 683 years after Mahāvīra's death. I have already said that Manguhasti is mentioned in the Mathura inscription of the year 52 corresponding to AD 130, and that this Manguhasti is to be identified with Mangu of the Nandisutra. The Svetambara commentaries,75 it is very significant to note, paint an unfavourable picture of this saint. We are told that he was born as Yakkha after his death at Mathura. The date given in the inscription, mentioned above, and the date given to Arya Mankhu in the Digambara tradition, support one another. It is therefore, permissible to believe that the second-century Jaina saint Mangu was one of the founders of the Digambara sect. This also indirectly confirms the Svetambara evidence regarding the actual time when the Digambara formally separated, which should therefore be placed around AD 150.
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It should be remembered that Pārśva allowed an under and an upper garment, while Mahāvīra forbade clothing altogether. This information is provided by as early a text as the Uttaradhyayana," which was in all probability composed in the fourth century BC. It appears that from early times the Jaina monks, according to their individual whims, indulged in both kinds of practices, namely wearing cloth or going about naked. These two modes of conduct were known as jinakalpa and sthavirakalpa, respectively. Mahāvīra himself, as we have already noticed, discarded clothing altogether 13 months after he became an ascetic, but Pärśvanatha, whom I consider to be the real founder of Jainism, never went about naked. The Bṛhatkalpabhāṣya” further informs us that the doctrine of the
