Jain Journal 1972 01

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

Page 11

JANUARY, 1972
it preserves within itself exceedingly interesting testimony of ethnographical and socio-historical processes". During the past quarter century or so, almost all important works in Jaina Canons have been edited and put into print in the Indian languages. But there is as yet no parallel effort to hold these up to the world at large through an understandable international medium, like English, which may be a responsibility of the coming generations of scholars. Another point worthy of note is that being a dominant business community all over this vast country, "the Jainas belong in their main mass to the middle and great burgeoise". This is both a point of strength and weakness, strength so far as the internal structure of the community is concerned, which is at the forefront of the country's economic life, and weakness in the face of the country's growing socialistic trends. But the community is in possession of an unusual adjustability, and hence, despite its bourgeoise structure, is not likely to disintegrate. The point of refutation is the very assumption on which the study stands, which is presented in the following words in the introduction :
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"The expansion of Aryans could not but call forth resistance of pre-Aryan peoples. In our opinion, this resistance to a significant degree expressed itself in new faiths, arising on the borders of 'Vedic' world such as Jainism, Buddhism, Bhagavatism, etc."
The fault is not entirely of the writer, but of the whole gamut of Indian history in which Jainism of the time of the 24th Tirthankara, Mahavira, has been mixed up with several hundred heretical view-points in vogue in the sixth century B.C. in the region which is the present state of Bihar. And yet it should not be difficult, provided we have a will to understand, to establish that Jainism is not only an independent current but a parallel current with Vedicism and there is nothing to prove that one is born in antagonism to the other. The Vedas, the earliest literature of the Aryans, have references to Adinatha Rsabha who was the first Tirthankara of the Jainas. Therefore, he could not have been posterior to the Vedas nor the leader of the protest. Madam Guseva herself writes about the dialogue between Krsna and Ghora Angirasa in the Chandogya Upanisad, and the later has been identified by scholars as the 22nd Tirthankara of the Jainas, Aristanemi, Krsna's own cousin, who must have been a powerful influence in moulding Krsna's own synthesis, and Krsna, whatever his ethnic origin, is the very Godhead to the Hindus all over India. Even a careful perusal of Jaina tenets would leave no doubt that there is nothing heretical about them. If there be anything that should impress a scientific investigator in the field of ethnography, metaphysics and philosophy, it is its inherent richness as an independent system.