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independent existence?" "We must first be able to determine the character of primitive Jainism, and that is a problem which we will be able to face only after we attain access to the canonical books of the sect. Up to the present time our sources of information on the matter are limited to external testimonies.” Weber also says in his History of Indian Literature, “Our knowledge of the Jains is otherwise derived from Brahmanical sources only." Under these circumstances can the opionin of these scholars be expected to be of much weight to us ? Certainly not. The opinion of scholars who know almost nothing of Jainism cannot but be unsound, the more so when there is no evidence to support their conclusions except the weak argument of resemblance. These scholars were so much struck with the similarity between Jainism and Buddhism that they regarded the one as a copy of the other and since they knew little of the former they considered it as an offshoot of the latter, till they came to know more of it. This is in itself a very unsound argument. One sect may copy whole sale from the other, yet that is no ground for saying that the former took its rise from the latter or vice versa. This, however, should not detain us. Let us see if there is any mention of the Jains as a branch of the Buddhists in the sacred books of the Hindus, the Buddhists, or the Jains. The Hindu Acharyas never speak of the Jains
as a branch of the Buddhists. They Hinda soriptura,
always speak of them as two inde
