Life in Ancient India as Depicted in Jain Canons

Author(s): Jagdishchandra Jain
Publisher: New Book Company

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LIFE IN ANCIENT INDIA
the nine Pūrvas and who ordained his whole family, as mentioned already.
Among the latei exponents of Jain religion mention may be made of Umāsvāti, Kundakunda, Siddhasena Divakara, Samantabhadra, Haribhadra, Akalnka, Vidyānanda and Hemacandra. All of them were versatile writers and they supported the cause of Jainism by their most valuable writings. Hemacandra, otherwise known as kalıkålasarvajña, was a versatilc genius and became the head of the community in III A.D. It was during this time that Kumārapāla embraced Jainism and under his patronage Jainism became the state religion of Gujrat. Since then Jainism went on dcclining and its star never shone brightly again
Jainism passcd through many storms and upheavals from time to time from its birth, and yet it could survive and did not disappear from 'the soil of India like its sister religion Buddhism. The chicf cause of this seems to have been the inflexible conservatism of the Jains in holding fast to their original institutions and doctrines. This is the reason, as Prof. Jacobi has pointed out, that although a number of less vital rules concerning life and pactices of the monks and lay men may have fallen into oblivion or disuse, yet the religious life of the Jain community even now is substantially the same as it was two thousand years ago.80
90 Charpentier, Cambridge History of India, p. 169.