________________
On Mahavira and His Predecessors
113
practices before he found out the right belief and the right conduct. He seems to have carved out his own way, a fact which required much strength of character, and which is easily recognised in all Buddhist writings. But Mahâvîra went through the usual career of an ascetic; he seems never to have changed his opinions nor to have rejected religious practices, formerly adhered to. Only his knowledge increased, as in the progress of his penance the hindrances in the higher degrees of knowledge were destroyed until it became absolute (kevala). His doctrines are not spoken of in the Sûtras as his discoveries, but as decreta or old established truths, pannattas. All this would be next to impossible if he had been like Buddha the original founder of his religion; but it is just what one would expect to be the record of a reformer's life and preaching. The record of the fourteen pûrvas points the sameway; for these books, which were lost some generations after Mahâvîra's Nirvana, are said to have existed since the time of the first Tîrthankara Rishabha or Adinâtha; they must therefore be considered as the sacred books of the original Nirgranthas previous to Mahâvîra's reforms. But all these arguments are open to one fatal objection, viz., that they are taken from the Jaina literature which was reduced to writing so late as the fifth century A.D. During the preceding ten centuries, an opponent will say, the Jainas melloled everything in their sacred books on the preconceived theory of the uninterrupted existanct of their faith since the beginning of the world. On this supposition the whole of the world be a most wonderful fabric of world; for everything is in keeping with the theory in question, and no trace of the contrary left. I place much confidence therefore in the Jaina Sûtras, being of opinion that they are siaterially the same as they were in the early centuries after Mahâvîra's Nirvana, as may be proved to be the case with the Âchârâñga, the present disposition of which is already followed in Bhadrabâhu's Niryukti. Yet we must confirm the above suggested opinions by evidence from another quarter, open to no objection. If the sects of the Buddhas and Jainas were of equal antiquity, as must be assumed on the supposition that Buddha and Mahâvîra were contemporaries and the founder of their sects, we should expect either sect mentioned in the books of their opponents. But this is not the case. The Nirgranthas are frequently mentioned by the Buddhists, even in the oldest parts
