Jainism

Author(s): N R Guseva
Publisher: Sindu Publications P L

Page 16

JAINISM....
or disagree with the belief that Jainism was born out of Brahmanism (or vedic religion) one should try to imagine the ethnical picture of ancient India, one should try to understand how ancient Aryans settled in India and how the mutual relations between Aryans and the non-Aryan peoples developed.
The viewpoint, much prevalent in ethnography viz. that the Vedas, the first literary work of Indo-Aryan tribes, known to us (in any case, Rigveda, which is considered as the most ancient of the Vedas) took shape mainly on the territory of Punjab.
It is also recognised, as a rule, that the very first wave of the Aryan settlers were the creators of the Vedas, after which other waves followed. The epoch of creation of the Vedas consists of a long duration viz. the period between the third and first millennium B.C. The Indian patriot and historian Bal Gangadhar Tilak carries it as far back as ten to fifteen centuries earlier in the depths of history, while some other (much later) historians consider that the Vedas were formed during the very end of the second and first half of the first millennium B.C. There exist so many viewpoints in regard to the question of the exact time of the settlement of the Aryans and the creation of the Vedas, that it is not possible to enumerate all of them here and moreover, it is not necessary to do so. What is important is the general conclusion to which all the historians have come viz. the process of accumulation of Vedic hymns was gradual and partly proceeded in the course of many centuries until the arrival of Aryans in India, when they roamed from place to place around the lands, lying to its north west.
The material of the Vedas enables us to trace the process of class-caste stratification of the ancient Aryan society, already originating on the Indian soil and the formation of the caste of priests (Brahmanas) who were the hosts of rituals and monopolised the knowledge of vedic mantras (hymns). The development of that religion and that cult-ritual complex which is known as Brahmanism started precisely from this moment.
The conception of "Brahmanism" includes first of all the dictates of Brahmins in the sphere of ideology. While Vedic
2. B. G. Tilak, The Arctic Home of the Vedas. 3. L. Renou. Vedic India, p. 5.