Jainism by Vividus

Author(s): Ramnik V Shah
Publisher: Ramnik V Shah Canada

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1. ANTIQUITY: HOW ANCIENT IS
JAINA RELIGION?
Just when in the remote past Jaina Religion actually began and who in fact, at that time, was responsible for it are not definitely known.
Brahmanic literature of the earliest times has reference to the existence of a religious Order strongly arrayed against the Vedic authority and the prevalent practice of animal sacrifices. In such older books as Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas, the first Jaina Tirthankara (Prophet) Rshabhanatha is mentioned as belonging to a very remote past. Both in Rigveda and Yajurveda, extensive reference material on Rshabhanatha or Adinatha (his other name) is available Rshabhanatha is referred to as an ancient sage who enlightened the kshatriya kings with spiritual knowledge. Strangely enough, even the twenty second Tirthankara Arishtanemi (Neminatha) is eulogised as bestower of the real good. Neminatha in Jaina literature is said to have renounced the world and become a saint without going through his marriage with Rajul, which was about to take place when he saw great preparations for marriage feasts in which living animals to be slaughtered were caged. He belonged to the same Yadava family to which Krishna of the Mahabharata fame belonged, in fact, both were cousin brothers and it was Neminatha who led the Jaina Order during the period of the Mahabharata war when Krishna preached the philosophy as contained in the Geeta.
Jainas themselves maintain that their religion is eternal and that it has been revealed again and again in every one of the endless succeeding periods of the world by innuinerable Tirthankaras, Rshabhanatha being only the first Tirthankara of the fourth period (ending with the passing away of the twenty fourth and the last Tirthankara Mahaviraswami in the year 527 B.C.) of the Avasarpini laka of the one Cosmic Cycle of time (the
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