Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 94

232
JAIN JOURNAL
and then a more detailed one of the line of descent from the latter downward, with some particulars of subsequent heads of the gaccha called Sripujya. The number of gacchas, which usually differ only in minute details of conduct, is said to amount to 84, of which only 8 are represented in Gujarat, the most important of them being the Kharatara Gaccha, which has split into many minor gacchas, the Tapa, Ancala, and others. Separate mention is due to the Upakesa Gaccha, whose members are known as the Oswal Jainas; they are remarkable for beginning their desent, not from Mahavira, but from his predecessor Parsva. These lists of teachers seem, as a rule, to be reliable only in that part which comes after the founder of the school to which they belong; the preceding period down to about the 9th cent. A.D. is one of great uncertainty : there seems to be a chronological blank of three centuries somewhere. 45
Records which allude to contemporaneous secular history are scant; such as we have in inscriptions and legends refer to kings who had favoured the Jainas or were believed to have embrached Jainism. The first patron king of the Jainas is said to have been Samprati, grandson of the great emperor Asoka ; but this is very doubtful history. A historical fact of the greatest importance for the history of Jainism was the conversion of Kumarapala, king of Gujarat, by Hemacandra.
Finally, we must mention the schisms (nihnava) that have occurred in the Jaina church. According to the Svetambaras, there were eight schismis, of which the first was originated by Mahavira's son-in-law, Jamali ; and eighth, occurring in 609 A.V. or A.D. 83, gave rise to the Digambara sect.46 But the Digambaras seem to be ignorant of the earlier schisms; they say that under Bhadrabahu rose the sect of Ardhaphalakas, which in A.D. 80 developed into the Svetambara sect.47 It is probable that the separation of the sections of the Jaina church took place gradually, an individual development going on in both groups living at a great distance from one another, and that they became aware of their mutual difference about the end of the 1st cent. A.D. But the difference is small in articles of faith (See art. “Digambara').
The sources for the history of the Digambaras are of a similar kind of those of the Svetambaras, but later in date. The Digambara
45 A full bibliography of this subject is contained in Guerinot, Essai de bibliographie
Jaina, p. 59 ff. 46 See E. Leumann, in Ind. Studien, xvii (1885), 91 ff. 47 See ZDMG, xxxviii (1884), 1 ff.