Jainism

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

Page 43

HISTORICAL & ETHNICAL ROOTS OF JAINISM 29
lisation and existing side by side with it and its creators in the course of certain period, the first Aryan newcomers adopted from them a number of philosophic conceptions and marching towards the east should carry them with themselves. It is possible that precisely those conceptions formed the component part of the reformatory faiths, which were born there.
Prescription of strict vegetarianism, which is one of the principles of Jain ethics developed in all probability in nonAryan environment. Vegetarianism could not have been natural to the ancient Aryans, if only due to climatic conditions of those countries from where they came to India (also Vedas do not give us any ground to affirm that vegetarianism was prevalent with cattle-breeders-Aryans). But in the climatic conditions of India, full or partial abstention from meat as food is singularly possible to imagine and that is why it is natural to assume that the first Aryan newcomers living in India, possibly several centuries before the arrival here of basic waves of tribes of their kinsmen adopted from the local population the custom of vegetarianism, which occupied a very important place also in the syncretic faith of Jainism.
The Asuras attract much attention from amongst pre-Aryan peoples of India, who have left behind a noticeable trace of complex, syncretic faiths, which had developed in Bihar. There were apparently numerous people or more probably a big group of tribes, settled in the north and east of India and undoubtedly underwent forced assimilation with the Aryans coming on their soil. The resistance of Asuras as also of other local peoples to this assimilation served as the greatest reason for the formation of anti-Brahmanic, reformatory faiths in Bihar.
It is known that Aryans called the Asuras, demons, enemies of their gods and consequently their own enemies. It is difficult to ascertain which of the local peoples were covered by this appellation (as it is difficult to ascertain whether Asuras lived in the valley of Indus). But since ethnography knows about the autochthonous people called Asuras (Asura, Asur) living in Bihar even at present, there is every ground to assume that precisely this ethnonym lies at the basis of the term 'Asura' in Vedic literature. The word Asura or Akhura is found not only in Rigveda but in 'Avesta' also.. Does it not speak of the Asuras, having settled sometime much distant towards the west