Jainism in North India

Author(s): Chimanlal J Shah
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London

Page 27

JAINISM IN NORTH INDIA the duration of his life does not at all transgress the limits of probability as is the case with bus predecessors."
No doubt history cannot draw inferences on such grounds. but the perod of Indian history with which we are concerned is greatly wanting in data on which we can base our authoritative conclusions “It is almost impossible," observes Dutt, " to fix any precise date in the history of India before Alexander the Great visited the land ” It is really inexplicable why everything has been recorded since the advent of Lord Mahāvīra, the product of the great Indian synthesis, and also why authentic records are missing previous to this with all this, it is not a hopeless task to fix an historical date for Páráva, the twenty-third Tirthankara of the Jainas. The contemporary literature of the time of Mahāvīra and Buddha throws a great deal of light on this important question of Jaina history, and, as we shall see, the evidence put forward by the Jaina Sūtras is also not less worthy of note
Taking Pārsva, the object of our search here, we find that there is no authoritative data in the form of an inscription or a monument which is directly connected with him, but there are inscriptions and monuments from which an indirect inference can safely be drawn
Rcvicting the Jaina inscriptions from Mathura we find that there is a reference to Rshabha in a dedication to him by lay votaries 3 Moreover, we find here that most of the inscriptions arc dedicated to more than one Arhat 4 "All of them, whether bcaring kings' names or not, clearly belong to the Indo-Scythic period, or if the era of Kanishka and his successors is identita with Saka-era-to the first and second century AD” 5 If Mahavia was thic founder, it can with all impunity he said that there is a tainly no great gulf of time that divdes him from the people of whose dedication to Mahāvīra we have spoken above, since they come only some six centuries after him, which fact would place them at once in possession of much intimate knowledge as to be loundation of the religion But. over and above this, the dedicati 18 to more than onc Arhat, and particularly to Rshabha, which iad
1 Larsen, 1.4 ,11,P 201
Dutt, op el, p 11 USATO : May the divine Rshabhs be pleased)
to HITT
,
+
ERAT (Adoration to thc Arhats)
.
. p 371
bd.
388. Ins No