Doctrines of Jainism

Author(s): Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi Godiji Jain Derasar Mumbai

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The Doctrines of the Jainas
regarded as the goal of all the highest practical and theoretical activities, and it indicated the point of unity amidst all the diversities which the complex growth inhabited by different peoples produced.
It is really difficult, nay impossible, to fix a particular date for the origin of Jainism. To the Jainas, Jainism has been revealed again and again in every one of these endless succeeding periods of the world by innumerable Tirthankaras. Of the present age the first Tirthankara was Rishabha and the last two were Parsva and Mahavira. Nevertheless, modern research has brought us at least to that stage, wherein we can boldly proclaim all these wornout theories about Jainism being a latter offshoot of Buddhism or Brahmanism as gross ignorance or, to repeat, as erroneous misstatements. On the other hand, we have progressed a step further, and it would be now considered a historical fallacy to say that Jainism originated with Mahavira. This is because it is now a recognized fact that Parsva, the twenty-third Tirthankara of the Jainas, is a historical person, and Mahavira like any other Jaina enjoyed no better position than that of a reformer in the galaxy of the Tirthankaras of the Jainas.
Coming to the reformed Jaina Church of Mahavira or Jainism as such, it spread slowly among the poor and the lowly, for it was then a strong protest against caste privileges. It was a religion of equality of man. Mahavira's righteous soul rebelled against the unrighteous distinction between man and man, and his benevolent heart hankered after a means to help the lumble, the oppressed and the lowly. The Brahmana and the Shudra, the high and the low, were the same in his eyes. All could equally esfect their salvation by a holy life, and