Jain Journal 1972 01

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

Page 34

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JAIN JOURNAL
Aristanemi wielded considerable influence. Krsna himself may not have been an avowed adherent of the Jina's creed, his love and esteem for the cousin whom he even looked upon as a guru and mentor, were nevertheless undoubted. Vasudeva, his father, Balarama, his brother, Pradyumna, his son, and several other members of the family, were followers of the Tirthankara, as were also many other Ksatriya princes of the time, including the Pandavas. The Pandava brothers, it is said, became devotees of Aristanemi in their later years when they migrated to South India, practised severe austerities as Jaina ascetics there and ultimately attained salvation ; the existence of places like PanchaPandava-malai and Madurai in South India seem to support the tradition.
Prior to the Mahabharata War, the Madhyadesa of northern India had for a long time been the chief and very powerful stronghold of Vedic religion and culture with the political power also weilded mainly by Vedic Ksatriyas. This rapid progress and ascendancy of Vedicism had evidently been achieved at the cost of the Sramanism of the Arhatas. The war reversed the scales, giving a severe blow to the temporal power of the Vedic people there, while their religion and culture, based principally on yajñas which involved animal sacrifice, visibly lost ground and such sacrifices became rare even in those regions because of the revival of Sramana Dharma under the leadership of the Tirthankara Aristanemi and due, in a large measure to the influence of his Ksatriya followers like Krsna, Balarama, Pradyumna and the Pandava brothers. It also appears that the western and southern parts of India m cularly came under the influence of this Tirthankara. The fact that his images have been discovered in these regions in larger numbers than those of any other Tirthankara is not, perhaps, a mere accident, and points to the greater popularity he has since enjoyed there.
It is also not without meaning that Jainism has often been described as the Ksatriya religion, especially in the light of frequent allusions in the literary and oral traditions of ancient India to the proverbial Brāhmaṇa-Sramana rivalry which was taken to be synonymous with the Brahmana-Ksatriya antagonism.20 About the earlier half of the first millennium B.C., there existed in eastern India a class of people known as Vratya-Ksatriyas, i.e., Ksatriyas-by-vow, not by birth, 21 which is evident from the many references made to them in early Brahmanical literature. They have been described as being outside the
20 Cf. Guseva, op. cit., p. 3. 21 lbid., p. 11.