Jain Journal 1994 07

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

Page 13

THE 24 BUDDHAS AND THE 24 TIRTHANKARAS
Suzuko Ohira The Buddhists enumerate the past 7 buddhas, 24 buddhas and so on, and the Jainas also count the 24 tirthankaras. The Buddhists and the Jains used to share many concepts in the olden days, and it is not so easy to determine which sect of the two initiated one thereby followed by the other sect. The case of the 24 buddhas and the 24 tirthařkaras is one of them. This problem seems to have been kept somewhat intact, and therefore let us try to take it up in this paper.
The concept of the past 7 buddhas seems to have originally
n that of the 7 vipras of the Ravedal. The past 7 buddhas who include the Buddha himself as the 7th occur in various places in the Agama.And it is assumed that Asoka knew these past buddhas from the facts that Bharhut inscription records the bodhi trees of the past 6 buddhas excluding the 2nd buddhas Sikhi, and that Asoka repaired the stūpa of Konāgamana twice.” In the Agama, the 24 buddhas are said to be dealt with exclusively for the first time in the Buddhavamsa along with the past 27 buddhas and the future buddha Maitreya, and in the Apadāna along with the past 35 buddhas. Also there emerged the past 32 buddhas,' and numerous buddhas in the later ages, e.g., the past 45 buddhas, 53 buddhas, 58 buddhas, 2 billion buddhas and so on. There are numerous buddhas in the present time and the future also. 7 The Apadāna which seems to be slightly earlier than the Buddhavamsa, is said to be after Asoka for sure, but is held variously by many scholars, for instance, c.a. the 1st century B.C. by A.K. Wader on
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H. Nakamura : His Selected Works, v.11, p.489 H. Ui : Studies of Indian Philosophy, v.4, p. 216 H. Ui : Ibid., v.2, p.166 E. Maeda : A History of the Formation of Original Buddhist Texts, p.768 T. Kimura :His Collected Works, v.5, pp. 83ff. Kern : Manual of Indian Buddhism, pp.63-64. Referred by H. Nakamura in his Selected Works, v.11, p.524, n.95 S. Mochizuki : Mochizuki Bukkyo Daijiten, v.5, pp.44387. S. Mochizuki : op. cit. pp.4438-40
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