Historical Facts About Jainism

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

Page 96

84 which gave the cloctrines and the legends in a more convenient form, and were gradually forgotten. It is thus evident, that the development of the Jaina literature has not, at any time been violently interrupted and that it can be traced through its different stages from its true beginning.
Professor JACOBI's able discussion has the great merit that it offers for the first time the outline of a self-consistent history of the developement of the Jaina literature which is partly based on the undeniable results of critical investigations. On reading it, I could, however, not suppress a regret, that his answer to Mr. Barth is in one important point incomplete, since it furnishes no instance in which the tradition of the Jains is proved to be trustworthy by independent, really liistorical sources. This feeling induced me to enter on a careful re-examination of all the ancient historical documents which refer to the Jains, and to inquire, if they furnish any data which corroborate the earlier Jaina tradition and liberate atleast portions of it from the suspicion of being a deliberate forgery. The result is that I believed to be able to prove the correctness of a not inconsiderable part of the larger list of teachers and schools, preserved in the Sthaviravali of the Kalpasutra(1). The historical documents, corroborating it, are the well-known Mathura inscriptions, published in 1. Kalpasutra pp. 78-82, ed. Jacobi, and S. B. E. XXII,
p. 288-293,