Introduction to Jaina Sadhna

Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 16

Historical Development of Jaina Sädhanā : 9
Jainism advocated rigorous and strict austerities in this regard, while Buddha condemned this rigorous outlook and pursued a middle path.
Though there was much similarity in the missions of Jainism and Buddhism, Buddhism flourished more on other soils than on its native land and established itself as a world religion. Jainism never had a firmfooting on the foreign soil. Jainism remained firmly rooted in India through all the periods of Indian history, while Buddhism was totally uprooted from its own soil of origin. Why did these two religions have the diametrically opposite fates? There were many reasons for this; to name the few, Buddhism found şuch royal patrons as Aśoka and Kaniska, who were fired with missionary zeal of spreading it outside India and had the territory of their empire across the Indian borders. Though Jainism also found some royal patrons as Candragupta Maurya, Khāravela and Kumārapāla, but they did not try for the expansion of Jainism on foreign soil. Moreover, the Jaina monks did not agree to go outside India, because it was very difficult for them to observe their strict code of conduct outside the country and they did not like to be flexible in their code of conduct. Another most important reason was that the Buddha had recommended the middle-path and remained flexible in prescribing the moral code for his monks and nuns throughout his life. This middle-path and flexibility made Buddhism more adaptable to foreign soil. But due to the same reasons Buddhism was so adopted by Hinduism that it could not retain its independent entity in India. First of all the middle-path of Buddha was not very far from the teachings of the Gitā. Not only this, the later developed Mahāyāna sect of Buddhism had very little to mark it out from the original stock of Hinduism. Secondly, the Buddha himself was accepted as the ninth incarnation of Vişnu. Thirdly, flexibility in moral-code made the life of Buddhist