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Looking for Evidence of Early Jainas Archaeology, Folk Religion, and Women
Christopher Key Chapple Loyola Marymount University
The origins of traditions and cultures have long fascinated scholars of religion. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions all look to Biblical accounts to explain not only the beginnings of their respective traditions, but the origin of the very universe itself, as narrated in the book of Genesis. The religious traditions of India offer a different model for the origins of things, with various perspectives from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina traditions proclaiming that the world and its religious traditions have no specific point or source of beginning. For the Hindus, the world arises from desire, as explained in Rig Veda X: 129, a text regarded to be authorless yet authoritative that asserts that no one can ever know the true origin of things, not even the gods, for they were born after the unknown, untraceable beginning of things. Similarly, the Buddha avoided speculation about the origin of things, as typified in his dialogue with Malunkyaputta, where he claims that such discussion does nothing to uproot the source of human suffering. The Jainas proclaim the eternality of all matter and all souls, and refute any theories that attribute the creation of things to a god or supernatural beings. In all these traditions, the accepted notions of creation and historicity so foundational to the prophetic montheisms simply do not arise.
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