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Satya Ranjan Banerjee : Jain Society in the ReignofJain Kings
211
as Siva and by the Yogin as a devotee of Yoga and also by the Jains as a Jina.”
The above verse will tell us how a sort of secularism in the modern sense of the term was prevalent in the middle history of India where all sorts of religious faiths could live together without any enmity.
One of the greatest contributions of the Jains in the Age of Imperial Kanauj (750-1000A.D.) was the introduction of the caturāśrama concept of Hinduism.' It is believed that Jinasena (9th cent. A.D.), a pupil of Vīrasena, and the friend of king Amoghavarşa I (815 - 877 A.D.), and an author of the Adipurāņa, accepted the Caturāśrama system of Hinduism. His follower the famous Digambara Cāmundarāya (10th i 11th centuries A.D.) in his work Cāritra-sāra has acknowledged this concept of the four āśramas of the Hindus. Except one, the names are also the same. His system of caturāśrama can be tabulated thus :
Caturāsrama
grhastha
vänaprastha
grhastha
vānaprastha
brahmacārin 1. upanayana brah 2. avalamba brah. 3. adīkņā brah 4. gūdha brah 5. nāişthika brah
bhikṣu i. anagāra ii. yati iii. muni iv. rsi
jāti ksatriya
tirtha ksatriya
This above classification is given by the followers of the school of Jinasena. Whether this system is still in vogue or not is difficult to say. But this much it can be said that in the normal Jaina context the term muni has no relevance, even though the term is prefixed to certain Jaina sādhus in modern times. As the term bhikṣu generally refers to a Buddhist monk, this term is not generally used by the Jains. Sometimes the Svetāmbaras use it to describe an ordinary Jaina sādhu. 1. Along with the concept of caturāśrama, the Jains also discussed
See S.R. Banerjee, Introducing Jainism, p. 34 f.
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