Jain Journal 1967 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 26

HERMANN JACOBI
on
The Original Traits of Jainism
In an essay entitled "The Metaphysics and Ethics of the Jainas', printed in The Transactions of The Third International Congress for The History of Religions, Vol. II, Jacobi said,
"All who approach Jaina philosophy will be under the impression that it is a mass of philosophical tenets not upheld by one central idea, and they will wonder what could have given currency to what appears to us an unsystematic system. I myself have held and given expression to this opinion but I have now learned to look at Jaina philosophy in a different light. It has, I think, a metaphysical basis of its own which secured it a distinct position apart from the rival systems."
“Jainism”, says Jacobi, "is a monastic religion. Some European scholars who became acquainted with Jainism through inadequate samples of Jaina literature easily pursuaded themselves that it was an offshoot of Buddhism. But it has since been proved beyond doubt that their theory is wrong."
That the above theory is wrong is further demonstrated by Jacobi in his comparison of the last Jaina prophet Mahavira with the first and only prophet of Buddhism Gautama Buddha. In his words:
“Mahavira, however, unlike Buddha, was most probably not the founder of the Sect... Mahavira is not described by tradition as having first become a disciple of teachers whose doctrines afterwards failed to satisfy him, as we are told of Buddha ; he seems to have had no misgivings, and to have known where truth was to be had and thus he became a Jaina monk. And again, when, after many years of austerities such as are practised by other ascetics of the Jainas, he reached omniscience, we are not given to understand that he found any new truth or a new revelation, as Buddha is said to have received ; not is any particular doctrine or philosophical principle mentioned, the knowledge and insight of which then occurred to him for the first time. Mahavira appears in the traditions of his own sect as one who, from the beginning, had followed a religion established long ago ; had he been more, had he been the founder of Jainism, tradition, ever eager to extol a prophet,