Lecture On Jainism

Author(s): Lala Banarasidas
Publisher: Anuvrat Samiti

Page 28

( 20 ) This Gatha of the Darshana Sara is cited as an authority by Swami Atina Ram, a Svetambara Sadhoo, in his Ajnana Timira Bhashkara and other works and by Pandit Shiva Chandra, a Digambara, in his PrashnaUttara Dipika, and by almost all other living Pandits of the day as an authority for the view that Buddha was originally a Jain monk, who being corrupt in thought, recommended the use of Aesh, and having assumed red garments, started a religion of his own.
Thus you will scc. gentlemen, that in Brahmanical writings the Jains arc nowhere spoken of as a branch of the Buddhists cvcn as carly as when Badaravana wrote, and that was the time when Buddha himself lival; that in Buldhist scriptures the Jains arc spoken of as contemporary of Buddha or as a scct older than the newly arisen Bauddhas; and that according to Jain Shastras Buddha was a Jain monk, a disciple of Pihitashraya. How are the Jains to be regarded as an offshoot of the Buddhists then? Havc pot Weber, Wilson, and others donc us great injustice in calling us an offshoot of the Buddhists? Certainly they liave. Il'c. Jains, can, however, respectfully make allowance for them, for their conclusions were duc to haste. They are, after all, great scholars, and we should forget what they have said, though by their innocent but hasty opinions wc have gencrally come to be regarded as id branch of the Buddhists. They never studied the antiquity of Jainism in the light of Jain, Buddhist and Brahmapical Texts.