Mahavira his Times and his Philosophy of Life

Author(s): Harilal Jain, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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the religious history of India that the memory of Mahāvīra is so concretely kept at his birth place by his kinsmen though 2500 years have quietly elapsed.
The period in which Mahavira lived was undoubtedly an age of acute intellectual upheaval ir. the cultural history of India; and among his contemporaries there were such religious teachers as Keśa-kambalin, Makkhali Gosāla, Pakuddha Kaccāyana, Purāṇa Kassapa, Samjaya Belaṭṭhiputta and Tathāgata Buddha. Mahāvira inherited a good deal from earlier Tīrthakaras. He left behind not only a systematic religion and philosophy but also a well-knit social order of ascetics and lay followers who earnestly followed and practised what he and his immediate disciples preached. Buddha and Mahāvīra lived in the same age and moved about in the same area with the same dynasties and rulers in view. They stressed the dignity of man as man, and preached to the masses in their own language high moral ideals which advanced the individual on the spiritual plane and further contributed to social solidarity. To posterity, they are the best representatives of the Eastern or Magadhan religion, of what is generally called the Śramanic culture; the basic literature embodying their utterances, has luckily survived to us.
A comparative study of the early Jaina and Buddhist works presents a remarkable similarity and breathes verily the same religious and moral spirit which has not only stood the test of time for the last two thousand years and more but is also serving today as the master key to the solution of many a human problem. Truth and non-violence as preached and practised by Mahātmā Gandhi can be better appreciated against the background of the moral code preached by Mahavira and Buddha. The references to the nirgrantha tenets in the Pali canon are of great value for assessing the relation of Jainism and Buddhism.
Apparently there was so much in common between Buddha and Mahāvira, that early European scholars mistook them for one individual. But today, with the progress of studies,
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