Jinamanjari 1999 09 No 20

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 14

suggested that the Majjhima throws light on the relationship of the Buddha to the Jainas. 18 The Pāli Upāli Sūtra refers to a very large number of inhabitants of Balakagrāma near Nalanda was headed by Upāli and they were lay disciples of Mahavira. The banker Msigāra of Śrāvasti, father-in-law of the Buddhist lady Visākhā was a disciple of Mahavira and supporter of Jaina recluses. 19
The Anguttara makes reference to Prescription of Five Precepts as taught by Mahavira.20 Several suttas of Diga refer to the life and thoughts of Mahavira; and the Majjhima contains references to syādvāda and other Jaina conceptions.21
Mahāvīra Congregation and the Law
In order to propagate his gospels, Mahāvīra institutionalized a fourfold congregation: monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen. It appears from a sociological point that he not only recognized the gender, but also assigned an equal status to all in each of the orders. As we see in the following, "He made no distinction between men and men, or between men and women. He did not enjoin one set of rules for male recluses and another for those of the fair sex, one set of rules for male lay disciples and another for female lay disciples."22
His stress on individual freedom and thereby a free pursuit of happiness and prosperity in life was a declared guarantee. Individual freedom to conceive and formulate a view in one's given state is proclamation of anekanta theory which Mahāvīra postulated to the world. He declared that 'opposing predications may be made about the same object from the same point of view in the temporal and spatial circumstances. This epistemological investigation became the harbinger policy for the social harmony and tolerance towards difference in the social and societal realms.
The original features of Jaina system of religion and philosophy - underlined by salient features such as non-creation theology, cosmological thought, nature of soul and substance, reincarnation in conjunction with karmic effects and liberation theology -- have been carried over from at least to time of Pārsva to the time of Mahavira. For example, what Pārsva had preached concerning the Real, Mahāvīra postulates in the doctrinal form of utpāda-dhrauvya-vyaya, genesis-permanence-destruction.23 In light of this fine tuned and developed doctrine, the Vedic argument that God is everything and everything else is unreal -- a mere manifestation -- appeared self-contradictory. Because, Mahāvīra not only affirms the