Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 70

Introduction
49
history of Jainism is concerned.
Sudharman was succeeded by Jambusvāmī who led the community for twenty-four years. Subsequent leaders were Prabhava, Sayambhava, Yasobhadra, Sambhūtavijaya and Bhadrabāhu. Tradition makes Bhadrabāhu a contemporary of Candragupta Maurya during whose leadership a great famine took place, as a result of which a part of the community, numbering twelve thousand, went with him to the south of India where the famine had not penetrated. The other part, also numbering twelve thousand, remained in Magadha under the leadership of Sthūlabhadra. The latter, who was interested in preserving the canonical literature, convened a council at Pāķaliputra which collected the Anga texts, eleven in number. The twelfth Anga, containing fourteen Pürya texts, was found missing, but Sthūlabhadra was able to supply it from memory. (Historically, however, all of the Angas, as we have them in their present form, were not compiled in the Pāțaliputra council). The famine over, Bhadrabāhu returned with his party, but he refused to accept the proceedings of the Pāķaliputra council as valid. A whole-hearted agreement on such a question as the canon of their scriptures thus became impossible. Bhadrabāhu also raised the famous clothes-versus-nudity question, since he found that the home-keeping group had adopted some form of clothing. Although the actual schism did not take place until two more centuries had passed, the basis of the order was considerably shaken by all such incidents.
After Sthūlabhadra the Jain church was led respectively by Mahāgiri, Suhastin Susthita. Supratibuddha, Indradinna, Dinnaśūri Simhagiri, Vajrasvāmin and Vajrasena. It was during the patriarchy of Vajrasena that the great schism resulting in the official separation of the Svetämbaras and Digambaras took place. Jain traditions, howe record eight schisms, the first of which took place as early as the days of Mahāvīra under the leadership of his own son-in-law, Jamāli.1 The second was caused by Gośāla (but actually he did not belong to the creed), the third by Aşādha Acārya, the fourth by Aśvamitra, the fifth by Ganga, the sixth by Rohagupta and the seventh by Goștha, but these were of minor importance in the history of the Jain church. But the last schism which was based on seven main tenets in which the Digambaras were opposed to the Svetāmbaras resulted in a sharp
1Glasenapp, DJ, pp. 346-49 *Guerinot, RD, pp. 48-62.