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Preface to the First Edition
Jainism, which is certainly older than Buddhism, originated some 800 years before the birth of Christ. Pārsvanātha, the twenty-third Tīrthamkara, but in reality the founder of this religion, belonged to Vārāṇasī, India's most sacred city. It is extremely significant that the first genuine protest against the Brahmanical religion came from a person who belonged to its strongest citadel. The religious system, established by Pārśva, gradually spread towards the east, and by the time Lord Mahāvīra was born, became one of the dominating forces in the religious life of eastern India. The Acārāngasūtra, which is one of the oldest Jaina religious texts, informs us that even the parents of Mahāvīra, who lived near Vaiśālī in northern Bihar, were followers of Pārsva.
Lord Mahāvīra, who was a somewhat junior contemporary of the Buddha (as I have shown in this work), made Jainism one of the most popular religious systems of northern India. For thirty years after his enlightenment, he spared no effort to make the Nirgrantha religion an all-India religious system. If we are to believe the evidence of the Bhagavatī, he personally preached even in western India. His rival, the Buddha, never went farther than the Kuru country. However, both these great Masters, it appears, spent the major part of their lives in modern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Magadha and Kosala being the janapadas, that received their greatest attention.
After Mahāvīra, his devoted followers made every effort to carry the message of Pārsva and Mahāvīra to millions of Indians living in different parts of this subcontinent. The immediate disciples of Mahāvīra were all Brahmans but at a later stage some non-Brāhmaṇa disciple gradually made the Nirgrantha religion a thoroughly antiBrahmanical religious system. Even the great Bhadrabāhu, a native of northern Bengal, was a Brahman and the first genuine Jaina philosopher, namely Umāsvāti, also belonged to that caste. From the first century BC, however, persons belonging to the business community started patronizing Jainism. I strongly believe that it was this
