________________
west respectively and Sravanbelgola in south. Puopadant etc wrote almost all Digambara canons) Emperor Samprati and son of Emperor Asoka and Skandila tried unsuccessfully to complete is said to have shifted his capital to Ujjaini Evetâmbara canons. During these period Vedic affecting this shift of Jainism from Patliputra to scholars like Patanjali, Valmiki etc started writing Ujjaini.
their texts and Buddhist philosophers compiled Pâli > Starting of the writing of Jain canons as the Tripitakas.
monks were becoming weaker in their memory In Lucknow museum we find a number of jain at Patliputra and later at Mathurâ but not idols carrying marks of 1st century BC to 1st century completed.
AD. Similar idols and other carvings can be seen Jain kings becoming weaker and Vedic kings in Mathura museum. started to gain power. Perhaps division in Jain
Acarya Ratna Prabh Suri came to Osiâ in creed, non-availability of strong religious
Ability of strong religious Rajasthan in first century AD and converted 125,000 teachers and infighting in the ruling families are
people to Jainism and called this community Oswal some of the causes for this situation.
which is even today one of the richest Jain ii. 300BC-200AD
communities spread primarily in Punjab and This is the period which saw decline of Maurya
Rajasthan. dynasty and rise of four dynasties namely Khârvela Vikramaditya and his successors ruled Ujjaini (Jain) in North-East i.e. Kalinga; North south path - from 50BC to 50AD and promoted Jainism. Andhra; North West with Seleucus of Greece as the Kankâli-Tilâ in Mathurâ was set up with a large king and others in deep south. Khârvela developed number of inscriptions, idols of Jains, which are Udaygiri and Khandgiri caves near Bhubaneshwar, even available in museums of Mathurâ and Patna with Jain inscriptions, temples and place of stay for but it has become deserted now. Jainism prospered Jain monks. He defeated most of the attacks by in south India during this period and thereafter as kings from other parts and extended his empire till will be seen with their influence in present day Mathura and Ujjaini, which became important Jain Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Kural, the bible of moral centers. Jainism was also becoming popular in ethics of Tamils was written by Kunda Kunda in south due to the presence of a large number of Tamil. Kannada, the language of Digambara Jain monks there. It is said that Jain monks were seen texts was adopted as the language of Karnataka in Greece (taken by Alexander the great at the state from that time onwards. specific request of his religious teacher Aristotle) and Rome during this period and even a tomb of II. Jain monk still exists in Greece. Thus during This period saw the end of Jain rulers, even Alexander's time Jainism moved out of India also though most of the kings gave respect to Jain to western and central Asia and on to Greece and acaryas and scholars. This is the period when Rome. Alexander met nude Jain monks in Gandhar, scholars and monks of all philosophies in India were Taksila, Punjab and Sindh.
writing their holy scripts, texts as well as building This period also became a period when the temples, idols, pieces of art and trying to argue with division of Jain into Digambara and Úvetambara each other about the supremacy of their own sects was formalized in spite of efforts by a number philosophy and refuting the others. During this of monks in Mathura. Due to the intense criticism period we also saw emergence of devotion (bhakti), of Jain philosophy by other Indian philosophers, religious rituals, use of tantras and mantras for Jainacaryas started writing scriptures in both winning over worldly afflictions. The Úvetâmbaras traditional as well as logical (Divârya, Kunda Kunda, made Gujarat as their centre with Vallabhi as an Uma Svâmi, Kumar Svâmi, Bhutabali and important centre of monks to write their canons,
yo
o
સપ્ટેમ્બર - ૨૦૧૭)
