Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 25

APRIL, 1974
of the Canon in 454 A.D. ?' In answer to Barth's doubts about the authenticity of Jaina traditions, Jacobi admits that the Jaina sect may have been for a long time small and unimportant, but contends that small sects, like the Jews and the Parsi, often do preserve their doctrines and traditions with great pertinacity, and better than larger religious communities. He points out that the trifling differences in doctrines and usages which caused the various schisms in the Jaina body, indicate that they were most particular about their tenets and that the detailed list of teachers and schools in the Sthaviravali of the Kalpa-Sutra which cannot be a pure fabrication, shows the interest taken in the preservation of records. With respect to the sacred books of the Svetambara, he rejects a portion of the tradition, which says that Devarddhi in the fifth or sixth century caused the Siddhanta to be written in books, and introduced the use of MSS. in the instruction of pupils and laymen. He takes only the latter statement to be true, and assumes that MSS. of the Anga and other sacred works did exist at an earlier period, 'because it is hardly credible that the Jaina monks should never before have attempted to write down what they had to commit to memory'.19
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There is only one important point on which Jacobi's answer is incomplete. It furnishes no instance in which the tradition of the Jaina is proved to be trustworthy by independent, really historical sources. This led Professor Buehler to enter on a careful examination of all the ancient historical documents which refer to the Jaina. The result has been that he has succeeded in proving the correctness of a great part of the larger list of teachers and schools, preserved in the Sthaviravali of the Kalpa-Sutra. The historical documents corroborating it are the well-known 'Muttra' Inscriptions, published in Sir A. Cunningham's Archaeological Reports, vol. iii. p. 31 ff., plates xiii-xv.20
These Inscriptions 21 bear the date of the era of Indo-Scythian kings over North-Western India, e.g., Kanishka, and though scholars are not quite agreed as to when to fix the beginning of this era, one of the latest dates assigned for Kanishka's accession to the throne is the year 78-79 A.D. The dialect in which they are written shows that curious mixture of Sanskrit and Prakrit which is found in the Gatha of the Nothern Buddhists. From them we also learn that the Jaina monks of Mathura formed, between 83 and 167 A.D., an order of a hierarchy, which was
19 S. B. E., vol. xxii, Jaina-Sutras, pt. i. p. xxxviii.
20 They not only mention the division of the Jaina monks into schools, lines of teachers, and branches, but contain the names of nine gana, kula, and sakha, and of one teacher mentioned in the Kalpa-Sutra.
21 Vienna Oriental Journal, 1887, vol. i. pp. 169, 179-180.