Doctrine of Jainas

Author(s): Walther Shubring, Wolfgang Beurlen
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 17

A SHORT HISTORY OF JAIN RESEARCH “Aupapātıka Sūtra” (AKM 8, 2; 1883)_originally a thesis of Leipzig-is influenced by WEBER and the Berlin Collection. It may be mentioned here that WEBER successfully co-operated with LEUMANN in his great essay referred to above. The editions of both JACOBI and LEUMANN are masterpieces of philology, and it was only a predilection for the old Prakrit grammarians that led PISCHEL in his famous “Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen" ($ 19, footnote 3) to call HOERNLE's "Uvāsagadasão" (1890) the only "critical" onel.
$ 3. JACOBI's introduction to the Kalpasūtra has come to be fundamental for all further research. This research has been described up to the twenties of this century by WINDISCH and need not be repeated here. Its starting point was, due to JACOBIS, the definite removal of any doubt whether the Jains or the Buddhists were of earlier origin, a doubt resulting from some inward and outward similarities between those two worlddenying religions. Jain creed had sprung into existence long before Gautama Buddha's time, Vardhamāna Mahāvīra was not its founder, but a reformer of what Pārśva had taught, whom tradition credibly maintains to have lived 250 years before him. It may be added here from a later deduction of JACOBI's that Mahāvīra’s Niryāna was in 477 B.C. As we know from Pali sources, he was a contemporary of Gautama and is likely to have survived him by seven years,
Palı texts, moreover, give numerous details about thinkers and their schools in the Buddha's time. F.O. SCHRADER, a pupil of Leumann, made them the subject of his thesis in 1902%.
I A reflex of Pischel's remark can be seen in Antagadadasão cd BARNETT, PX, comp LEUMANN JRAS 1907, p 1080 As to the Uvās. sce LEUMANN's review WZKM 3, 328-350
2 For Jain studies in Italy mostly going back to JACOBI see the indological bibliography up to 1911 in Rivista degli Studi Orientalı 5, 219-271
3 See his introduction to the Kalpasūtra and to SBE 22 and 45
4 COLEBROOKE found at ncccssary to investigate the precedence of the Veda and of Brahmanism before the said religions (Observations etc, Misc Essays II 196 ff) FRANCKLIN had no doubt that the original religion of India was that of the "Boodh" and the "Jeyne" (Rescarches p 137)
5 SPAW 1930, P 557ff ($19) Counter-arguments brought forward by KEITH Bull School Or. Studies 6, p 859-866
6 Uber den Stand der indischen Philosophie zur Zeit Mahāvīras and Buddhas Strassburg 1902