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The Predecessors of The 24th Jina
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the signs of the 18th Tirthankara Era. While agreeing that the sources of Jainisms arose in non-Aryan environment and the kshatriyas (Aryans as well as vratyas) played a significant role in forming new faiths, we can not all the same, explain to which people these vratya-kshatriyas belonged to-Mundas or to Dravids, Tibetain, Burn ese or to Monkhmerese. The ethnical map of the settlement of tiese people in ancient India is not yet made.
Several research scholars assume that the kinds of saudyumna and satadyumna, referred to in the genealogical lists of Puranas orginated from the Mundas. The culture of the hidden copper treasure and yellow ceramics, the contemporary civilisation of the valley of Indus, which is widely known at present and referred to in every work on the ancient history of India, was also quite possibly created by the ancestors of the Mundas.
The bearers of the 'culture of hidden copper treasure probably did not have the custom of mass-offering of cattle in sacrifice to the deities and expressed indignation at these bloody killings of hundreds of domesticated animals in the name of Aryan gods. Apparently, this practice was not prevailing amongst the Dravidians, since in the very early works of south Indian literature, coming down to us (in Tamilian epics of the beginning of our era) this practice is not reflected.
The indignation at sacrificial offerings must have been very deep, because the Aryans did not offer in sacrifice only cattleherds but the representatives of local people-such cases are repeatedly described in Mahabharat, where these people are referred to as Nagas (serpents), Rakshasas (demons) etc. In the ancient texts in pali language it is indicated precisely that Brahmins practised Purushmedh i.e sacrificial offerings in the form of human beings. Prescription of strict vegetarianism, which is one of the principles of Jain ethics developed in all probability in non-Aryan environments. Vegetarianism could not have been natural to the, ancient Aryans, if only due to climatic conditions of those countries from where they came to India (also vedas do not give us any ground to affirm that vegetarianism was prevalent with cattlebreeders-Aryans'. But in the climate conditions of India, full or partial abstention from meat as food is singularly possible to imagine and that is why it is natural to assume that the first Aryan new-comers living in India, possibly several centuries before the
