Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 55

APRIL, 1974
of the Jainas have, like the Buddhists, in their continual battles with the Brahmans, found it necessary to make themselves acquainted with the ancient language of the culture of the latter. First the Digambara and later the Svetambara began to use Sanskrit. They did not rest content with explaining their own teaching in Sanskrit works: they turned also to the secular sciences of the Brahmans. They have accomplished so much of importance, in grammer, in astronomy, as well as in some branches of letters, that they have won respect even from their enemies, and some of their works are still of importance to European science. In sourthern India, where they worked among the Dravidian tribes, they also advanced the developement of these languages. The Kanarese literary language and the Tamil and Telugu rest on the foundations laid by the Jaina monks. This activity led them, indeed, far from their proper goal, but it created for them an important position in the history of literature and culture.
The resemblance between the Jainas and the Buddhists, which I have had so often cause to bring forward, suggests the question, whether they are to be regarded as a branch of the latter, or whether they resemble the Buddhists merely because, as their tradition asserts, 16 they sprang from the same period and the same religious movement in opposition to Brahmanism. This question was formerly, and is still sometimes, answered in agreement with the first theory, pointing out the undoubted defects in it, to justify the rejection of the Jaina tradition, and even declaring it to be a late and intentional fabrication. In spite of this the second explanation is the right one, because the Buddhists, themselves confirm the statements of Jainas about their prophet. Old historical traditions and inscriptions prove the independent existence of the sect of the Jainas even during the first five centuries after Buddha's death, and among the inscriptions are some which clear the Jaina tradition not only from the suspicion of fraud but bear powerful witness to its honesty.17
16
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The later tradition of the Jainas gives for the death of their prophet the dates 545, 527 and 467 B.C. (See Jacobi, Kalpa Sutra, Introd. pp. vii-ix and xxx). None of the sources in which these announcements appear are older than the twelfth century A.D. The latest is found in Hemacandra who died in the year 1172 A.D. The last is certainly false if the assertion, accepted by most authorities, that Buddha's death falls between the years 482 and 472 B. C. is correct. For the Buddhist tradition maintains that the last Jaina Tirthakara died during Buddha's lifetime.
17 Apart from the ill-supported supposition of Colebrooke, Stevenson and Thomas, according to which Buddha was a disloyal disciple of the founder of the Jainas, there is the view held by H. H. Wilson, A. Weber and Lassen, and generally accepted till twenty-five years ago, that the Jainas are an old sect of the Buddhists. This was based, on the one hand, upon the resemblance of the Jaina doctrines,