Mahavira His Life and Teachings

Author(s): Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Luzac and Co UK

Page 68

61
TEACHINGS
great Brāhmaṇa, the great Śramaṇa, and the rest of usual titles of Vardhamana come into prominence as Jaina specials 1
The text of the Angas and that of some of the Upangas do not fail, notwithstanding their later accretions, to suggest that very atmosphere of society, religion, and thought in which it was possible for Jainism and Buddhism to arise and make a wide appeal to the classes of people to whom they were addressed. Silanka and other Jaina commentators have assiduously tried, no doubt, to clear up allusions in these ancient Jaina texts to the views, beliefs, and practices by means of systems and doctrines of the Sankhya, the Vedānta or the Buddhist Sünyavāda philosophy. But similar allusions to those very views, beliefs, and practices in the text of the Pali Canon suggest at once a much earlier stage of Indian religious thought, which was only imperfectly understood by the Jaina scholiasts Thus even in dealing with the teachings of Mahavira, the safer means of distinguishing between things earlier and later in the Jaina Angas consists in the side-lights that may be gathered from the Păli Nikayas, but not from the guesses of the Jaina scholiasts who flourished
1 Ibid, pp XIX-XX.