Jain Journal 1979 01

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

Page 32

118
In exploring the spatial extension of Jaina Sangha which includes four quarters of India it is to be pointed out in short that the Jaina Missions were the events in the life of Indian society of which Jaina sects and Jaina Sangha with its branches and sub-branches were only parts. When the spatial cross-sections of Jaina Sangha are taken into account it is found from the analysis of the factors-places of social, cultural, economic and political life that the Indian society differs perceptively according to the plane on which attention is focussed. For example, when one passes to the cultural plane, he finds that the present geographical extension of the Jaina society to which the Jaina sects and Jaina Sanghas and sub-sanghas belong appears to be very much smaller.
JAIN JOURNAL
When the extension of Jaina Sangha in time is examined, one is at once confronted with the difficulty that he cannot see into the future a limitation which greatly restricts the amount of light that the contemporary historical study of Jaina Sangha can throw upon the nature of the society to which it belongs. Ex-hypothesi, one cannot survey the whole life of Jaina Sangha of which he himself is a member, and which therefore will still be living its life as long as he remains alive to observe it. History is alive to observe it. History of Jaina Sangha will only become visible at full length and true perspective after the Jaina society has become extinct and this spectacle, if it is even to be beheld by human eyes, is necessarily reserved for future historians living in a different social environment from the present one and taking their historical observation from a different angle of vision. In the process of tracing the history of Jaina Sangha backward towards its origin one strikes upon the last phase of another society of the same kind the original of which evidently lies considerably further back in the past. This conclusion regarding the age and origin of Jaina Sangha carries with it a corollary regarding the continuity of the history of Jaina Sangha, as the continuity of history is the most attractive of all the conceptions. The concept of continuity of Jaina Sangha is only significant as a symbolic mental background on which one can plot out his perceptions of discontinuity in all their actual variety and complexity.
The spiritual revolution started by Rsabhadeva, the first Tirthankara, had already completed itself and spent its energy and a new evolution had taken place in the times of Parsvanatha and Mahavira and the later Acaryas. Thus Jaina religious movement has become a Jaina Sangha and the spiritual movement of it has become well a national force.