Doctrine of Jainas

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

Page 67

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JAINISM
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the sermon1 of the jina-magga in the south, a rise of the middle classes and insurgent activities of princes-altogether gloomy prospects for the future that caused Candragupta to resign in favour of his son. As to the manner of his death nothing is being said. Hence in the times of the Viyāhaculiyā it was also the Svet. that linked Bhadrabahu's name with the migration to the south leading to the schism of the Order. Provided we take Candragupta's piety strictly it does not harmonize with an allusion of Vimala's Paumacariya (89, 42) disclosed by JACOBI2 which in consequence of political troubles and religious apostasy speaks in retrospective prophesy of a decline of Jainism in the "time succeeding the Nanda." In opposition to the Dig passages of Bhadrabahu it was FLEET who contended that it concerned a second bearer of his name who acc. to an ancient list of the Dig. came to be the head of the Order in 492 after Mv, and that instead of Candragupta we have to think of Guptigupta or Arhadbali as being the pupil and later follower of "Bhadrabāhu II.". LEUMANN, however, points out that in this list already existing in the 8th century, "the second Bh. is but a chronistic repetition" and that "apart from the above Dig. dating nothing of him is known that were not assigned to him from the older." The migration itself seems to be historical, nor does FLEET argue against it For a religion in process of spreading necessarily flows from the country of its origin over into regions capable of absorption, no matter whether it be by some forced impulse
4
or not
§27. For the inscriptions of Mathura the above mentioned list of LÜDERS (1912) prevails; the bibliography of the later will
I It is significant of the Svet text that it speaks of a sermon (pannavissanti) only and not of a flourishing status
2
ERE 7, 473 footnote.
3
IA 21, 156-160, EI 4, 26 Reply to the first passage of RICE, Inscr. of the Mysore District (=Ep Carn III-IV), PI (1894), P 51 footnote 4. BHANDARKAR, Rep 1883-84, 124, HOERNLE IA 20, 341-361; 21, 57-84
5
Übersicht p 24 27.
6 Acc to a conjecture made by DESAI (Jainism in S India p 2 ff) there were Jain communities in South Canara even before Bhadrabahu's arrival, a fact that made it easier for him to choose that country