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JAINISM AND BUDDHISM
Dr. JYOTI PRASAD JAIN
lodian soil has heen, almost since the very dawn of human history, best suited to the growth of spiritual thinking. philosophical speculations and religious systems. And if it stands uoique in the world for her achievements in these spheres it does so, apart from Brahmanism, mainly on account of Jainism and Buddhism.
These two are the living representatives of that ancient current of Indian culture which is knowo as the Sramana and which is in its origin purely indigenous, non-Vedic or nonBrahmanical, and perhaps non-Aryan and even pre-Aryan too. The Buddhist legends speak of the four previous Buddhas who had lived prior to the appearance of Sakyamuni Gautama, the Buddha, who is, however, unanimously regarded to be the real founder of Buddhism as a religious system and who lived in the sixtb-fifth century B. C. The Jaios claim for their religion a far more veocrable antiquity and assert that twenty-four Tirthankaras (ford-finders or expouoders of religion) appeared at intervals and preached the true religion for the salvation of mankind, and that Rşabba was the first of these finders of the path. Since he finds mention in the Rigveda and Yajurveda and in a number of Brahmanical Puranas, as well as the Buddhist Dhammapada, Satasastra and Nyaya-Bindu, modern scholars find themselves reluctant in denying his existence notwithstanding the fact that his precise time is not easy to assess. Rşabba's son was Bharata who is said to have been the first universal monarch and from whom this country is said to have derived its name. The twentieth Tirthankara, Munisuvrta, is said to have been a contemporary of king Ramachandra, the hero of the Ramayana, and the twenty-second, Aristapemi, was a cousin of Krisboa Vasudeva of the Mahabharata fame. Some non-Jain scholars are, however, generally inclined to regard these
