Jain Journal 1993 04

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

Page 40

The Doctrines of Mahavira!
Satya Ranjan Banerjee
The time of Mahavira, that is, the sixth century B. C., is extraordinarily important in the intellectual history of mankind. Some great men were born at that time, In India we have Vardhamāna Mahavira and Gautama Buddha, in Persia Zoroaster, in China Confucius and Lao-tzu and in Greece Pythagoras--all were promulgating their new doctrines in their respective countries, and as a result, some basic human religious ideas emerged out of their doctrines. All these great men revolutionized some of the then fundamental ideas of human beings. Mahăvira's contribution towards the religious development of mankind is a great landmark and unparalleled in many ways in the annals of human history.
It is to be noted that seers and saints, philosophers and poets, theologians and thinkers, playwrights and writers, great men and reformers are born in this world only to mould the destiny of men from generation to generation. They have left their riveted thoughts and trenchant ideas only to influence the opinions of their followers with the instructiveness and values of their lives which lay in the means which they had shown to prove themselves what they were. The history of human civilization would not have been like this to-day, had not these great men left their contributions for the betterment of human beings. In fact, "No great men", says Carlyle, "lives in vain. The history of the world is but the Biography of great men.”
Such was the life and activities of Lord Vardhamana Mahavira, an almost forgotten saint of India, who came to the arena of intellectual battlefield over 2500 years ago, when the majority of the world were in the infernal gloom and cimmerian darkness of colossal
1 For Mahā vira and his doctrines, see Hermann Jacobi, Jaina Sutras, SBE, Vol. 45,
1895; see also his article on Jainism in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ed by Hastings, Edinburgh, 1908-21 ; H. L. Jhaveri, The First Principles of the Jaina Philosophy, London, 1910. Jagmander Lal Jain, Outlines of Jainism, Cambridge, 1940; A. Chakravarti, Samayasära, Bharatiya Jñanapitha, Delhi, 1944.