Jambu Jyoti

Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad

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Jainism vis-à-vis Brahmanism
the parallels in a short paper like this. (We hope, such a study will be presented on some other occasion in the future.)
Besides, the following factors have also been taken into our account. Some scholars have shown interest in tracing textual parallels of the type and studied them critically (for a list of some such scholars, see Bhatt 1996). Such a trend in researches is still in its infancy, and probably not known to the scholars in this part of the world where most of the research writings from abroad is somehow unobtainable.
In view of the mutually related character of the ancient Indian literature, this bare material might at the initial stage generate interest among the scholars who are except Hindi or their native language-not conversant with the English language and also with old or new research material of non-Indian origin (because of this reason, we had to resort quite often at intervals to Hindi -the national language of India---in order to explain to the scholars the contents of this paper, while delivering it before them at the All-India Oriental Conference, Prakrit and Jainism Section, January 1997, at the Jadhavpur University, Calcutta, India), and finally we consciously and determinantly endeavoured to get the textual parallels in Sanskrit-Prakrit published in Nāgarī (instead of their transliteration in Roman) character, so that this paper might be relatively useful to all scholars—those who do not understand or read English, and also those who are not much used to read properly the transliterated parallels in Roman script.
(26) Interdisciplinary Character :- As do the Buddhist so also the Jaina texts show some impacts of the early Brahmanism; they developed, certainly not without any impact. Early Jaina passages evidently show no repugnance to the Brahmanical groups of ascetics and to Brahmanical ideology either. This will be clear from the Catalogue of Parallels supplied separately at the end of this paper. Last, but not the least, in the situation where almost every field of Indological studies, particularly the Jainological and Brahmanical ones, is built up in such water-tight compartments, that no idea of their interdisciplinary character is let in, our title at the outset combining two disciplines, namely Jainism and Brahmanism shall, we hope, attract and incite the readers of both the disciplines at a time to break through the barriers created between various studies, e.g. traditional-modern, Indian