Historical Facts About Jainism

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

Page 92

thinks that the Jainas, when separating from the Buddha, intentionally clisowned their teacher Sakyamuni and chose to fabricate a fable, which made thein pupils of one of his opponents and rivals. This view is, in his opinioni, suggested by the extraordinary resemblance of the Jaina and Buddha legends regarding the lives of their teachers. (1) Mr. A. BARTI(2) doubts the trustwortliness of the Jaina tradition, because their sacred books, avowedly, have been reduced to writing in the fifth century A.D., or nearly a thousand years after the foundation of the sect, and because there is no evidence to show that they have had since that remote epoch a self-conscious and continuous existence, i.e., a direct tradition of doctrines and records. We believes that during many centuries the Jains (lid not become distinct froin the numerous groups of ascetics who could not boast of inore than an obscure foating existence and that later they fabricated their tradition on the model of that of the Buddhists. Professor JACOBI has discussed the opinions of both scholars in the important introduction to his translation of the Acharanga and Kalpa Sutras(3) and has tried to meet their objection to our view.
He first attacks the fundamental proposition, on which his opponents must rely, viz.
1. Indische Studien, Vol. XVI, p. 240. .. Revue de l'histore des religions, Vol. Ill. p. 90. 3. Sacred hooks of the East, Vol. XXII, pp. X-XLVII.