Jain Journal 1984 04

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

Page 12

APRIL, 1984
Mahavira also shared the sufferings and ignominy with him. Gosala was beaten by villagers on many occasions and also suffered other ignominies at their hands, while he and Mahavira were seized by a village headman and in another place were suspected as spies and thrown into a well.
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With this background in view the reception accorded to the ascetics in Radha would perhaps appear less strange, and need not be accounted for simply by the assumption that the people of West Bengal were nonAryan11 and therefore of wild character, though that might be partly or even wholly true, for all we know.
At the same time it is only fair to remember that naked ascetics like the Jainas and Ajivikas must have been repulsive to people of good taste and high culture as well as ordinary men not accustomed to such a practice. According to the Dhammapada Commentary the Buddhist lady Visakha remarked on seeing an Ajivika, 'Such shameless persons, completely devoid of the sense of decency, cannot be Arihants.'12 The Divyāvadāna records a similar feeling on the part of even a courtesan.18 Such a feeling must have been more widely spread and far more acute at the time of Mahavira when the people were unaccustomed to such sights of nudity and the women must have been specially shocked at them. How far such a feeling was at work when the people of Radha set dogs upon Mahavira and other naked ascetics, and otherwise ill-treated them, cannot be ascertained, but merely the fact that they were non-Aryan11 and were therefore necessarily rude and wild, may not be the whole excuse or sufficient expalnation of their conduct. This view gains some strength if it be accepted as a fact, as suggested above, that Gosala and Mahavira chose to live among the people, for such a course implies a gradual change in attitude on the part of the people. No one is likely to fix up his headquarters among a rude and vicious people beyond redemption. Further, as we shall see, the people of this part gradually embraced Jainism and this region became a strong centre of this religion.
11 But some Jaina texts represent the allied peoples of Anga and Vanga in a good light. Sylvain Levi observes, 'For the Jainas, Anga is almost a holy land. The Bhagavati places Anga and Vanga at the head of a list of sixteen peoples, before the Magadha. One of the Upangas, the Prajnapana, classes Anga and Vanga in the first group of Arya peoples whom it calls the Ksatriya.' The list also includes Tamalitti, i.e. the people of Tamralipta in West Bengal (Radha). P. C. Bagchi, Pre-Aryan and PreDravidian in India (Calcutta, 1929), p. 73.
11 Dhammapada Commentary, p. 400; evarupa hirottappavirahita arahanta nama nahonti.
13 Divyavadana, ed by Cowell, p. 465.
14 Cf. f.n. 11.