Historical Facts About Jainism

Author(s): Lala Lajpatrai
Publisher: Jain Associations of India Mumbai

Page 85

comparative study of the Jain traditions about Mahavira and those of the Buddhists about Buddha. For the Buddhists have detailed records how Buddha first followed Sankhya philosophy and expected by employing Yoga methods to arrive at the promised state of omniscence, but on finding out from actual experiment that the severest asceticism and the most protracted fasting did not lead 11j) to the clesired goal, he relinquishiech those vaini efforts and arrivec by deep meditation at the perfect enlightenment which revealed to him the saving trutlis of a new religion. But nothing of this kind is related of Malavira, not a trace of liis having to search for the truth, and when he had reached perfect enlightenment, not the slightest indication that he found out a novel truth; but he is regardled to have been a Jain from the beginning, as his parents are said to have been lay adherents of Parsva, and to have entered the already existing onler of Jain ascetics when he renounced the world. If he liac founded an entirely new religiou, as Buidhe undoubtedly clich, Jain serijtures wou'd inost certainly not have suppressecl this fact and have passed in silence over the greatest merit of the founder of their religion. Hence le concluded that at the period of Nallavira and even before it jrinisin had been for some time a firmly establishech religion, and that Mahaviru did only reforin it and reorganised the order of ascetics.
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