On Indian Sect of Jainas

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Jas Burgess

Page 14

'pillar' edict, which he issued in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, "My superintendents are occupied with various charitable matters, they are also engaged with all sects of ascetics and householders; I have so arranged that they will also be occupied with the affairs of the Samgha; likewise I have arranged that they will be occupied with the Ajivika Brāhmaṇs; I have arranged it that they will also be occupied with the Nigantha". [38] The word Sangha serves here as usual for the Buddhist monks. The Ajivikas, whose name completely disappears later, are often named in the sacred writings of the Buddhists and the Jainas as an influential sect. They enjoyed the special favour of Asoka, who, as other inscriptions testify, caused several caves at Baràbar to be made into dwellings for their ascetics. [39] As in the still older writings of the Buddhist canon, the name Nigantha here can refer only to the followers of Vardhamâna. As they are here, along with the other two favourites, counted worthy of special mention, we may certainly conclude that they were of no small importance at the time. Had they been without influence and of small numbers Asoka would hardly have known of them, or at least would not have singled them out from the other numerous nameless sects of which he often speaks. It may also be supposed that they were specially numerous in their old home, as Asoka's capital Pațaliputra lay in this land. Whether they spread far over these boundaries, cannot be ascertained.
On the other hand we possess two documents from the middle of the next century which prove that they advanced into south-eastern India as far as Kalinga. These are the inscriptions at Khandagiri in Orissa, of the great King Khâravela and his first wife, who governed the east coast of India from the year 152 to 165 of the Maurya era that is, in the first half of second century B.C.
The larger inscription, unfortunately very much disfigured, contains an account of the life of Khâravela from his childhood till the thirteenth year of his reign. It begins with an appeal to the Arhat and Siddha, which corresponds to the beginning of the five-fold form of homage still used among the Jainas, and mentions the building of temples in honour of the Arhat as well as an image of the first Jina, which was taken away by a hostile king. The second and smaller inscription asserts that Khâravela's wife caused a cave to be prepared for the ascetics of Kalinga, "who believed on the Arhat." [40]
From a somewhat later period, as the characters show, from the first century B.C. comes a dedicatory inscription which has been found far to the west of the original home of the Jainas, in Mathurà on the Jamna. It tells of the erection of a small temple in honour of the Arhat Vardhamana, also of the dedication of seats for the teachers, a cistern, and a stone table. The little temple, it says, stood beside the temple of the guild of tradesmen, and this remark proves, that Mathurâ, which, according to the tradition of the Jainas, was one of the chief scats of their religion, possessed a community of Jainas even before the time of this inscription. [41]
A large member of dedicatory inscriptions have come to light, which are dated from the year 5 to 98 of the era of the Indo-Skythian kings, Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vasudeva (Bazodeo) and therefore belong at latest to the end of the first and to the second century A.D. They are all on the pedestals of statues, which are recognisable partly by the special mention of the names of Vardhamâna and the Arhat Mahâvíra, partly by absolute nudity and other marks. They show, that the Jaina community continued to flourish in Mathurâ and give besides extraordinarily important information, as I found in a renewed research into the ancient history of the sect. In a