Jainism vis a vis Brahmanism

Author(s): Bansidhar Bhatt
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

Page 2

Bansidhar Bhatt
Jambu-jyoti
this short paper. The readers are requested to refer to the studies concerned for such details. Some important studies discussing Vedic / Brahmanical origins of ahimsa, karma-theory, transmigration of the souls, asceticism, etc. are grouped roughly in some heads and are included in I.... Bibliography : (2) at the end of this paper, for a ready reference. Parallels from the contemporary Buddhists texts could not be included, and the protocanonical texts of the Digambara Jainas being relatively younger than the Jaina texts under consideration, also have been neglected in the present paper.
Besides, we are not keen in supplying passages containing merely ideological resemblances, so far as some themes / descriptions of hells or hellish sufferings, religious suicide, rules and regulations for speech, the begging-tour, food and drink, etc. are concerned. Our main aim here is to project simply the most of the Jaina passages in the foreground and conspicuously to shed some light on them. The study of the type is an imperative and, to the best of our knowledge, it as yet has been unaccomplished in the field of Jainism.
Prolegomena
(3) Two Aryan Immigrations :- The early Aryan immigrants had settled before the next Aryan immigrants came to India. The early Aryans adhering to their conservative Indo-Aryan character had established some spiritual centres in surrounding areas in the north-west and in the east. They also had preserved their simple ritual customs and ancient dialects (cp. Horsch. pp. 418-419, 478 foll.). It is assumed that, in the complex structure of the Vedic society, many archaic traits of early Aryan tribal life might have disappeared, few of them by chance might be determined by means of studies of other traits of a successively integrated tribal life. (Cp. also Parpola-1975 footnote 46 and Parpola-1973. See also his article : "The Coming of the Aryans to Iran and India......” Studia Orientalia, Cf. Helsinki 1988 pp. 195-302, Reviewed by K. R. Norman, Acta Orien, Upsula, 513, 1990 pp. 238-296).
(4) The Atharva-veda :- Though the Atharva-veda has some unorthodox character in its contents, its language and meters prove its