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BOOK REVIEW
MUNI UTTAM KAMAL JAIN : Jaina Sects and Schools. Concept Publishing Company, Delhi, 1975. 162pp. Price Rs. 50.00, $ 10
While the religion of the Nirgrantha has the golden aura of reason and perception in respect of the knowledge of Eternity, the voice of the Arhats echoes its message from time immemorial across the dawn of civilization. Tirthankaras from Rsabha to Mahavira have bequeathed to the world an institution of thought and ideal constant in their emphasis on the greatness and worth of the individual towards absolute freedom from attachment and thereby from the bondage of mortal existence. It is the Nirgrantha whose glory has the same meaning and interpretation like his teachings in their essential grace. The rationalistic approach and purity remained ever the same in antiquity as it will remain as such in all time though the religion have been split into schools by devotees in their human endeavour to discover prismatic beams in the radiance of an ideal as if to make a stable rainbow out of the sun. The predilection for creating diverse sects and schools among the followers of the tenets of the Nirgrantha dates, so far known, from the age of Mahavira who stabilised and developed the doctrine of Parsva. Dr. Jain has made a valuable contribution in the field by giving a critical account of different Jaina sects and schools which developed since the epoch of the life and teachings of the 24th Tirthankara. The writer has appropriately commenced from Parsvanatha whose spiritual legacy of cāturyāma merged in the ideal of panca mahāvrata enunciated by the doctrine of Mahavira. In the perspective of the accounts of the Kalpa Sūtra and the Uttarādhyayana the origin of Jainism acquires a special meaning. Recalling all these and the views of Charpentier and Guerinot one has to agree that Parsvanatha belongs to history. Thus, Dr. Jain points out,
"The scholarly introduction to Uttarādhyayana by Dr. Charpentier stresses that we should bear in mind that Jaina religion was essentially anterior to Mahavira. Parsvanatha had been an earlier historical personage and the original principles of Jainism were propounded far earlier than Mahavira. Guerinot's remarks that Parsvanatha had been a historical personage is but an extremely revealing reference. There are no two opinions about it.” (pp. 13-14).
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