Jainism

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

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JAINISM
or other pre-Aryan peoples of India, close to them did not appear from the northern country, we are left to think that this line of kinship; carried in the geneological lists of the Aryans speaks rather about the process of inter-breeding of local eastern Gangetic peoples with the Aryans-descendants of ancient people who had actually come sometime from the northern regions.
Thus, if Bhils—Nishads-Sudyumnas can be recognised as Mundas then precisely the faiths of this central and eastern Indian mass of tribes of Mundas must have played a significant role in the formation of Jainism.
Ethnography has not as yet established whether the Dravidians also lived in Bihar in those ancient times. Many scholars assume that precisely Dravidians formed the chief mass of the settlements of the Indus valley in the most ancient period. Judging from the legends of the Jains themselves, their religion had sometime spread beyond the borders of India, towards its west. It is interesting to note in this connection that the elements of Dravidian languages are traced back to the ancient languages of eastern shores of Africa, in several Mediterranean languages and the languages of the countries of Near East.29
It is possible that the Aryans ejected Dravidians from the regions lying towards the west of India or out of North India, compelled them to cross forests and mountains of Central India and push out in the south. It is also fully possible that the Dravidians marched along the Gangetic valley in the east, in the region which is of interest to us but when this actually took place is difficult to ascertain.
There is evidence that the ancestors of the strongest contemporary Dravidian people-Andhras-lived in antiquity from the shores of Jamuna to eastern Bihar and that only from the sixth century B.C. they started to move forward towards the south.30
29. From the latest works on this theme, refer to N. Lahovary, Dravidian Origins and the West.
30. Y. Balaramamurthi, Short History of the People of Andhra, pp. 13-14; V. S. Vorobyey-Lesyatovsky, About the Role of the Substrata in the Development of Indo-Aryan Languages; V. Ch. Law, India as Described in Early Texts of Buddhism and Jainism, pp. 101-108, 113-18; A. Banerji. Archaeological History of Mewar I, pp. 352-53.