Jain Journal 1974 07

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

Page 45

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Vratyas as well as later on the Aryas themselves got all incentives to the highly philosophic aspect of their own religion. It is a well-known fact that all over India, Jainas were the only people to know this aspect of human culture before the Aryans came.
JAIN JOURNAL
They were gradually driven to the South and the East. Jaina religion was their philosophic religion; the Jaina practice was prevailing prominently in Videha and such other regions in the East. It is well known how these practices developed. The highest Aryan philosophy of non-attachment and of non-violence was an essential part of Jainism. From these also developed as a matter of self-preservation, the great tradition of twenty-four Thirthankaras of the Jainas beginning with Rsabhanatha, who is but another name for Aryan Surya, called in the Rg Veda the Atman or the soul of all that moves and all that stands. But the Vedic ceremonials and customs, i.e., sacrifices and the caste, on the other hand, went on increasing in spite of all philosophical influences of the Jainas even in those Eastern regions, still affecting seriously the Jaina practices there.
But Kalinga region, i.e., the region of present Puri, was the seat of very quintessence of Jainism-the very essence of the philosophy quoted above, as this Kalinga, as I have said, was colonised by nonAryans specially by sea and by the Aryans by land both from West and North. It is noteworthy, however, that besides Puruşa and Purusottama, the words like Kaivalya is still used in the Oriya language and literature today.
Person or Puruşa is used in the Rg Veda to mean man. Even in Puruşa Sukta, the word Puruşa represents a great giant who is sacrificed to produce the entire universe. This undoubtedly contains the physical comprehension of the Jainas who sublimated the idea of individual Puruşa to the Puruşa universal. The process of this sublimation or selfelevation has been elsewhere described in connection with Purusottama or Jagannatha. But certain it is that the conception is not originally Rg Vedic. For there is practically no philosophy in the Rg Veda. All philosophy in the early Vedic culture came from the Jaina religion.
The word Puruşa, it may be noted, in the sense of person or Atman, meaning soul in control of the body, is not Vedic. Puruşa itself is a Prakrit variation of the original word Pubrașa. In Prakrit pronunciation it should be Pubrisa or Purisa. But in Kalinga it is pronounced Pubrusa or Purusa, for in Kalinga 'r' becomes not 'ri' but generally 'ṛu'