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A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF JAINISM
and interest the exciting Śiśupāla story so beautifully told in the Sabhāparvan. Elsewhere our author refers to Dvaipayana and Parāśara, which also indirectly shows his acquaintance with the Mahabharata. The Videhan monarch Nami is also mentioned,32 and he is to be identified with the famous Nimi of Brahmanical and Buddhist texts. Reference to the Striveda33 shows that works on the science of erotics existed in India in the fifth century BC. The earliest systematic work on this subject as we learn from Vātsyāyana," was written by Bābharvya Pāñcāla, who probably lived in pre-Buddhist times.
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It is extremely interesting to note that the author of the sutrakṛtānga calls Lord Mahāvīra a wise Brāhmaṇa (māhaṇa) at least in two places.35 The Buddhist canonical authors also make a similar claim on behalf of Gautama Buddha. In the work entitled Itivuttaka the Buddha directly calls himself a Brāhmaṇa. In the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha is called Angīras, who was a great ancient Rgvedic seer. Both Mahāvīra and the Buddha believed that by deeds one becomes a Brāhmaṇa and not by birth. The Sutrakṛtānga declares that a Brāhmaṇa is one who has ceased from all sinful actions, namely love, hate, quarrel, calumny, backbiting, reviling others, aversion to control and love of pleasures, deceit, untruth, and the sin of wrong belief. He is never proud and angry and always exerts himself. Similar definition of a Brāhmaṇa will not be difficult to find in the vast Tripitaka literature. That seeing of a śramana, was considered a bad omen is indirectly confirmed this text.39 In the play Mṛcchakatika1 the hero Carudatta himself expressed a similar sentiment when he saw a śramana.
In this text people living in Gandhāra, Gauḍa, Kalinga, Draviḍa are mentioned along with the Śavaras and Caṇḍālas." Probably even in the days of the Buddha and Mahāvīra peoples living in the extreme northwest, south, and east were looked upon with contempt by the people of Madhyadeśa. This does not necessarily prove that in the sixth century BC eastern or southern India were culturally more backward than the centrally located states. It is merely a question of attitude. Indeed, the metropolis of an eastern state, namely Pataliputra, became from the sixth century BC, the cultural capital of northern India.
Several types of coins like mășa, ardha-māṣa, rūpaka are mentioned in this text.12 Elsewhere in the Jaina canon,13 kārṣāpaṇa (including false kārṣāpaṇa), suvarṇa-māṣa, rūppamāṣa are referred to. We will
