Jainism in North India

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

Page 41

JUINIS IN NORTH INDIA religion is certainly older than Malāvīra, his reputed predecessor, Piruz, losing almost certainly cxisted as the real person, and tlmt con- quently the main point of the original doctrine may have me rirwlified long beforc Mahāvīra "1 Lastly, Dr Guérinot ***• "There can no longer be any doubt that Pārsvanātha was
"l asical personage. According to the Jaina tradition he must Boer lavet a liundred years, and died 250 years before Mabāvīra. Ilis pyriol of activity thereforç corresponds to the 8th century B.C. 'Ilir irents of Mahavira were followers of the religion of Pārsva”?
Troin all these overwhelming proofs about the existence of a Tirthikata or Tirthaukaras before Mahavira we can, without any Bar of buioncal fallacy, affirm that modern research goes rightly i Par birk as the days of Parsvanátha, About the other Tirthan
art sp shall not endorse the opinion of Mazumdar, who, even . i the risk of catirely disregarding the Jaina tradition, lays down that Rshnblin Duia, the first Tirthankara of the Jainas, "vas a ling of the loirāja dynasty in Bithoor (29th century BC.)." 3 We
hill inercly conclude in thc words of Dr Jacobi that "we must at our rosenrches here content to have obtained a few glimpses
to the prelustorical developnient of Jainism The last point rivirlı ve can perearse is Pārsva; beyond him all is lost in the mit of fab! and fiction," 4
1 Chinryntirr, Uttaradinajana, Int , p 21 1 fiu rant, op and loc cil Mazumlar, o,) and local Jamua, op. cit. p 163