Jain Journal 2004 01

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

Page 45

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JAIN JOURNAL VOL-XXXVIII, NO. 3 JAN. 2004
proper belief. But knowledge is bad when one understands sat and asat without any distinction, his knowledge is bad knowledge (ajñāna), and bad knowledge leads to mithyatva. But for the Jains, falsehood has no place, and cannot be considered as jñāna in the real sense of the term. But in Indian philosophy even mithyātva, falsehood, is also a type of knowledge. Even Buddhism says that what we see connot be denied, and this is similar to the Vedantic idea of Māyā. For example, you see a rope in the dark and you mistake it for a snake. For that duration of time, the rope becomes the snake. But when we recognize the rope for a rope, the illusion (māyā) is over and the illusion becomes mithya (false) and is naturally wrong. So we can see that falsehood is also a from of knowledge though lived for a short while.
As I mentioned earlier Jainism had its origin in Bihar. But later on Jainism spread far and wide from there to different parts of India. In the 4th century B.C. during the period of Chandragupta Maurya (324-300 B.C), there was a famine in Magadha, and it lasted for over 12 years. (There is reference to this famine in the inscriptions of Sravanabelagola in Karnataka). During this period the Jains found it very difficult to beg alms from door to door, because of various restrictions and taboos. So a group of Sadhus migrated to the South after travelling through the Vindhyas and other places and finally settled down in Sravanabelagola. These Sadhus then started preaching Jainism there. This is the reason why Jainism spread in the south. So there were many Sadhus and Monks in the south.
Historically the division of the original sect into Śvetambara and Digambara started when the people who had gone down to the south returned to the north in Magadha, where they perceived the differences between the two sects. This I would say is the basic turning point. Each claimed that theirs was the authentic teachings of Mahāvīra, while the other was mutilating it. But they lived side by side and it was only in the 1st century A.D, that is, the 79 A.D., or may be even the 4th or 3rd century B.C. that they started splitting up and by the 5th century A.D, they became completely different. When the people from the north migrated to the south came back to Magadha, they started looking at the differences between their ācāras or vyavahāras (conducts). For