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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
* Prath(a)manu yoga stories are texts which paint in vivid colors the repeated reincarnations of various important personalities of the spiritual or lay community of the Jains, which indicate which karmas have brought about which results in subsequent lives. 86 The Hindu Sivalingam have, according to Jains, evolved from the Jain manastambhas, because several Jain stupas were converted into Sivalingams, but can still be identified from their shape: rectangular at the base, octangular in the middle and oval at the top. & Chandragupta Maurya, the great emperor who lived around 400 BC (and who had met Alexander the Great when he was 18) unified India for the first time into one large empire. With him began the Maurya dynasty. Later is his life he returned to his original faith Jainism. The distinction between Svetambaras and Digambaras had not been defined in those days (though the split began in that same period in North India). Eventually he became a monk, abandoned his imperial, i.e. his worldly attributes, and lived and died on the mountain in Sravana Belagola which is now called Chandragiri. 88 Especially those of Sir John Marshall: Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, London: A. Probsthain, 1931; Ernest J.H. Mackay: Chanhu-Daro Excavations 1935-36, New Haven CN, American Oriental Society, 1943; Ernest J.H. Mackay: Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro New Delhi: Government of India, 1938; and Vats, Madho Sarup: Excavations at Harappa: Being an Account of Archaeological Excavations at Harappa Carried out Between the Years 1920-21 and 1933-34, 2 Volumes, (1940) 1997. 89 Parpola, Asko, Deciphering the Indus Script, Cambridge University Press, 1994. See also: Parpola, A. et al., Decipherment of the Proto-Dravidian Inscriptions of the Indus Civilization: A First Announcement. pp. 18-19, 22-23; Further Progress in the Indus Script Decipherment, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 1969-70, p.35.
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