Jainism

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

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JAINISM
Colebrooke indicates that many Greek authors of the third century B.C. divided all the philosophers in two groups samans (shramans) and brahmans and emphasised such a great difference between them that they considered them belonging to different races. This testimony is very valuable in as much as it emphasises racial differences between Jains and non-Jains. Whatever the Greeks understood by the word 'race'-whether belonging to different linguistic families or to different anthropological types, the fact that the difference between the bearers of religions—Brahmanism and Jainism was so much noticeable that it gave ground to ascribe them to different races is important. Only one interpretation can be given to this and that is in those times, followers of Jainism were, in the main, representatives of pre-Aryan population of the country. This means that there is a basis to assert that the chief components of this non-Vedic religion were engendered by non-Aryan ethnical environments.
Many contemporary research scholars have also come to the conclusion that the roots of Jainism are significantly more ancient than the middle of the first millennium B.C."
One of the contemporary leaders of Jain community, Sanskritologist Acharya Shri Tulsi finds confirmation in the four Puranas, of his opinion that the Asuras, already referred to in our work were not only non-Vedic i.e. non-Aryan people but they were the priests of Jain religion. He also considers that the pose of Yogasana, in which several human figures are drawn on the seals of Mohenjodaro was worked out by the Jains, was widely known in pre-Aryan India and was borrowed much later by the Hindu ascetics.10
The description in one of the sections of the canonical literature of the Jains 'Naiyadhamakahao', of the marriage of the heroine of Mahabharat, Draupadi with five brothersthe Pandavas—as a polyandrical marriage which Draupadi performs fully consciously, serves as an interesting testimony of the deep antiquity of the Jain religion and the cultural-historical tradition of Jainism. In this work it is shown that the girl
8. H. T. Colebrooke, Observations on the Sect of Jains, p. 287-322. 9. The Cultural Heritage of India, Vol. IV, p. 36. 10. T. Acharya, Pre-Vedic Existence of Shraman Culture, p. 25%