Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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OUTLINES OF JAINISM
classes, of which the third is the Nirgranthas. A new sect could not have held such an important place in a division of mankind.
(3) The Buddha had a dispute with Sachchaka, who was a non-Nirgrantha son of a Nirgrantha father. This also proves decisively that the Jainas were not an offshoot of Buddhism.
3. The third line of evidence consists of the Jaina books themselves. There are no reasonable grounds for rejecting the recorded traditions of a numerous class of men, as being a tissue of meaningless fabrications. All the events and incidents relating to their antiquity are recorded so frequently and in such a matter-of-fact way that they cannot be properly rejected, unless under force of much stronger evidence than that adduced by scholars who are sceptical as to the antiquity of Jainism. In the Uttarūdhyayana Sūtra (xxiii) an interview between Gautama and Kesin, the followers of Mahāvīra and Pārsva-nātha respectively, is held in a garden : after a conversation carried on in more or less occult terms the two leaders recognize the fundamental unity of the doctrines of their respective teachers, and leave the garden fully convinced that they are workers in the same field. This again points to an older Jaina faith, which prevailed before the advent of Mahāvīra and which was so vigorously reformed by him.
4. The last line of evidence is the ancient character of Jaina philosophy, e.g. :
(1) The “animistic” beliefs of the Jainas. (2) The absence of the category of Quality in their