Jaina Community a Social Survey

Author(s): Vilas Sangve
Publisher: Popular Book Depot Bombay

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Jaina Community-A Social Survey
that there are very few Jainas in Orissa where the caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri bear witness to its early popularity in the early centuries of the Christian era. The same is the case with West Bengal as there are practically no Jainas among the indigenous inhabitants of West Bengal. The continued predominance of the Jaina population in the past in the Eastern Region of India could be seen from the Saraka of West Bengal, Chhota Nagpur and Orissa who are the Hinduised remnants of the early Jaina people to whom local legends ascribe the ruined temples, defaced images, and even the abandoned copper mines of that part of Bengal. Their name is a variant of Sravaka, (Sanskrit hearer), the designation of the Jaina laity.8 But it seems that the Jaina religion was not in a position to wield a continuous hold on the population and later on with the advent of Muslim predominance in that part of the country even the lay Jainas had no course open but to migrate to other areas and especially to the Western areas.
8
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The relative absence of the Jainas in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and their comparative insignificance in Southern parts of Mysore are other noteworthy features in the distribution of the Jaina population. The Jainas reigned supreme in South India for a considerable period and there are ample evidences to show that in every walk of life their influence was felt by all people. In many places of South India, the Jaina religion was the State religion and numerous villages and towns seem to have been occupied by Jainas only, as can be seen from the names of villages or places like Samana-halli', or the village of the Sramanas, Śravana-Belgola' or the white pond of the Śramanas and 'Savanūr', Savanadurga' etc. But now only the temples and the colossal statues of Gommateshwar bear witness to its great popularity in the past. This sudden disappearance of the Jaina population from the land where they had a continuous hold for a very long time can, it seems, be attributed to the vigorous persecutionist policy followed by the non-Jainas against the Jainas.
6
Even though the Jaina population is concentrated mainly in the States of the Western Region of India, it is pertinent to note that the Jainas form a very small proportion of the total population of the respective States. The States and Union Territories in which 0.25 per cent or more of the population is made up of the Jainas, as per 1971 census, are given in Table 7.