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Lord Mahavira
come to the conclusion that the roots of Jainism are significantly more ancient than the middle of the first millennium B.C.
One of the contemporary leaders of Jain community, Sanskritologist Acharya Shri Tulsi finds confirmation in the four puranas, of his opinions that the Asuras were not only non-vedic i.e. non-Aryan people but they were the priests of Jain religion. He also considers that the pose of Yogasana, in which several human figures are drawn on the seals of Mohenjodaro was worked out by the Jains, was widely known in pre-Aryan India and was borrowed much later by the Hindu ascetics.
The description in one of the sections of the canonical literature of Jains Naiyadhamakahao', of the marriage of the heroine of Mahabharat, Draupadi with five brothers-the Pandavasas a polyandrical marriage which Draupadhi performs bully consciously, serves as an interesting testimony of the deep antiquity of the Jain religion and the cultural-historical tradition of Jainism. In this work it is shown that the girl accepts the five brothers as husbands voluntarily and according to her desire such a description is important for us for two reasons. Firstly, it clearly relates to that epoch, when polyandrical-marriage were not prohibited, were not disreputable. It bears more ancient character in comparison to mahabharat itself and all the subsequent literature, developing and explaining these and other episodes of this epic, since in all these works attempts are invariably made as if to make apologies for the very fact of this marriage, to legalise, to elucidate, or to ascribe external reasons for this form of marriage, which was not acceptable to the Aryan society of the epoch of formation of Mahabharat and was denounced by the social opinion, religious canons and the code of rights. Secondly, it shows Jains did not denounce polyandrical marriage. This again gives ground to connect Jainism with that ethnical environment, in which such a marriage was the norm of family relations i.e. it was possible with the Dravidian tribes, amongst whom, even at present, strong suvivals of polyandry exist.
It is worthwhile turning attention to the Swastik signs, seen on the seals of cultures of Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa, and which are common in the symbols of Jainism. Swastik is the symbolic of the 7th priest (Tirthankar) Suparshva (the Jains consider that there were 23 Tirthankaras before Mahâvîra) and the middle part forms
