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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(SEPTEMBER, 1894.
Bhaktimârga, a mixture of the philosophical tenets of the Upanishads with the exclusive worship of one of the great popular deities. Among these the heterodox Jainas claim to have had a prophet, whose death their traditional chronology places in the year 776 B. C. The trustworthiness of the Jaina tradition has been confirmed, of late, in very many particulars. And it has been shewn in particular that their second date, that of the death of their last prophet Vardhamâna or Mahavira, is approximately correct. As the Jainas assert that the Niggaạtha Vardhamana, the son of the Naya Rajput, died in 526 B. C. and the Buddhist canon places the death of the Nigantha teacher, the son of the Nata husbandman, before the Nirvana of Sakyamuni Gautama, which fell between 484 and 474 B. C., it is evident that the Jaina date cannot be much out, though a small error is very probable.
As it thus appears that up to 500 B. C. the Jaina chronology is more than a baseless fabric, there is good reason to suppose that the date for Paráva, whose doctrines and pupils are not rarely mentioned in the Jaina Angas, is not absolutely untrustworthy. The period of 250 years, which, according to the tradition, lies between the twenty-third Tirthaikara and his successor is not a long one and prima facie unsuspicious. It may contain a small error, as traditional dates frequently do. But the great probability of the view, expressed by Prof. Jacobi and by others before him,23 that Pâráva was the real historical founder of Jainism and that he lived in the second half of the eighth century B. C., seems to me also indisputable. If it must be conceded that a heterodox sect, whose teaching is based on a development of the doctrines of the Jñânamârga sprang up at that early period, it becomes impossible to reconcile this admission with the theory that the Brâhmaņa period began about fifty years earlier. Still more irreconcilable with the theory that the literary activity of the Indo-Aryans began about 1200 or 1500 B. C. is another point, which, I think, can be proved, vix., that the ancient Bhagavata, Satvata or PÅñcharâtra sect, devoted to the worship of Narayana and its deified teacher Krishna Devakiputra, dates from a period long anterior to the rise of the Jainas in the eighth century B. C. To give the details here would undaly lengthen this already long note. And I reserve their discussion for my Indian Studies, No. IV. The essentials may, however, be stated. They are (1) that the recovery of the Vaikhanasa Dharma Sútra permits me to fully prove the correctness of Prof. Kern's (or rather Kalakacharya's and Utpala's) identification of the Ajivikas with the Bhagaratas, and (2) that the sacred books of the Buddhists contain passages, shewing that the origin of the Bhagavatas was traditionally believed to fall in very remote times, and that this tradition is supported by indications contained in Brahmanical works. It is even possible that ultimately a terminus à quo may be found for the date of its founder, though I am not yet prepared to speak with confidence on this point.
As thus numerous facts, connected with the political, literary and religious history of India, force me to declare that the commonly credited estimate of the antiquity of the Indo-Aryan civilisation is very much too low, it is natural that I find Prof. Jacobi's and Prof. Tilak's views not prima facie incredible, and that I value the indications for the former existence of a Mrigasiras-series of the Nakshatras very highly. As the new theory removes the favourite argument of the Sanskritists of Possibilist tendencies, that the beginning of the Vedic period must not be pushed back as far as 2000 B. C., because the Kșittika-series may have been borrowed from the Chaldæans or from some other nation, it is of great advantage to those who like myself feel compelled by other reasons to place the entrance of the Aryans into India long before the year 2000 B. C. But I think that the matter should not be allowed to rest where it stands at present. A renewed examination of all the astronomical and meteorological statements in Vedic works and their arrangement in handy easily intelligible tables seem to me very desirable. More than thirty years have passed since Prof. Weber's most important essays on the Nakshatras were written. Various Vedic, Buddhist and Jain texts, which then either were unknown or only accessible through extracts, can now be easily
28 Indian Antiquary, Vol. IX. p. 162,
