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views relating to the soul and afterlife would show that the doctrine of Samsāra seems to have made its appearance in the Vedic circle suddenly and without adequate antecedents in the late Upanısadıc period 8 So new and little known was the doctrine in that circle that the assembled wisdom and priestly learning at the court of Janaka was largely ignorant of the doctrine of Karman It is thus fair to assume that while the older Vedic tradition emphasized the values of social obligations and their fulfilment through ritual and sacrament preparing man for widsom ultimately, there existed by its side another tradition, less known and fugitive, the tradition of Sramanism which was characterized by its doctrine of Samsāra and its attendant attitudes of pessimism and mendicancy Now an analysis of the earliest portions of the Jaina canon reveals that Sramanism thus characterized could well summarize the original Nirgrantha doctrine In this sense it would be correct to say that the Jaina tradition gives us the earliest and most authentic version of an ancient Sramanic stream of thought which can be distinguished from the well known orthodox Vedic tradition
In the sixth century BC this ancient and heterodox tradition acquired a remarkable popularity in north-eastern India The Nugranthas were its most ancient and pristine representatives and their Weltanschauung although primarily ethical was in sharp conflict with the prevailing social ethos of the Vedic tradition How challenging the situation was, we must seek to realize through an effort of the imagination in view of the habit acquired by our later experience of treating such contradiction as part of a syncretic harmony where the orthodox and the heterodox, Vedic and nonVedic traditions cooperate as elements of a larger and catholic Indian tradition It is not intended here to describe the emergence and resolution of this conflict which has been mentioned here only to highlight the fact that the theory and practice of Jaina ethics would not be intelligible unless it is placed in this socio-historical milieu The Niganthas challenged the absoluteness of social obligations, relating them to the lower, egoistical nature and passions of man Against these social obligations they
