________________
Gommatesvara Commemoration Volume
on a story found in a work of the 12th century A.D. and an inscription dated in the 3rd century B.C., i.e. after Bhadrabahu's arrival in the south. The first argument could be a motivation for Bhadrabahu to move to southern Karnātaka, or for us to look for evidence, but nothing more than that. Besides, we need not grant absolute credibility to the romantically large number of 12000 monks who followed Bhadrabāhu. Desai draws his second argument from the English translation of the Mahāvamsa by Geigers and points to a reference to nigantha-s on p. 75 (chapter X, vss. 97-99) and the supposed time of the events mentioned in that portion of the text as given in the chronological table on p. xxxvi of the introduction. Thus he concludes that during the reign of king Pandukābhaya, 377-307 B.C., there were Jainas on Ceylon. In his enthusiasm, however, Desai seems to have overlooked Geiger's very great reservations about the reliability of the early chronology on p. xxi, where he speaks of "an absolute impossibility in respect of the last two kings of that period Pandukābhaya and Mutasiva."" He believes this chronology was faked in order to make the first king, Vijaya, a contemporary of the Buddha. If we accept Jacobi's date of 350 BC for Bhadrabāhu's arrival in the south, and reckon with the false dating of Pandukabhaya as 377, then we may assume the arrival of the nigangha-s on Ceylon to have taken place after Bhadrabahu's arrival in Karnāțaka and the spread of Jainism further south. As regards the third argument, I must say that it is not really an argument either. There are indeed some indications that the two Tamil works Desai mentions show some influence of Jaina ideas, but this has never been proven conclusively by anyone. Besides this, Desai gives no dates at all for these works, and the latest research has given a date of 100 BC to AD 500 for the Tolkāppiyam and AD 450 to 500 for the Tirukkural,' i.e., both works were compiled long after Bhadrabāhu's arrival in the south." Desai's idea that Jainism was already in the south before Bhadrabahu is interesting, but at present we will have to wait for scholars to come up with other data before we can accept it.
If we cannot accept the view that Jainism existed in the south before Bhadrabāhu, then the view that Jainism is of Dravidian origin is still more unwarranted. Nevertheless, there are people who actually want to believe this. M. L. Mehta says that Jainadharma and “Drāvidadharma” both see the world as full of sorrow (duḥkhapūrņa), both deny the existence of a creator-god, accept the doctrines of karma and rebirth, accept souls and matter as ultimate realities in a dualistic philosophy, and all these characteristics are non-Vedic : therefore they are Dravidian, and the Dravidians were the people of the ancient Indus Valley civilization, and the inhabitants of Mohenjo Daro were Dravidians and spoke a Dravidian language, so say a number of (anonymous) vidvan-s. Mehta gives absolutely no details about bis “Drāvidadharma", if such a thing exists at all, and I have absolutely no idea what he means. If the “Drāvidadhárma" is supposed to deny the existence of a creator-god, then why did the Saiva and Vaişņava bhakti- movements, which forced back Jainism and completely expelled its sister
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
