Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
to imply that the religion expounded that preached by the earlier Tīthankaras and its adherents did not exist in different parts of the subcontinent. On the other hand, when natural calamities or other potent circumstances caused en-masse emigrations of Jaina monks from Magadha or Ujjain to Gujarat, Kalinga, the Deccan, Karnataka or south India they appear to have been sure to find their coreligionists in those lands, who would welcome and entertain them. They did not go as preachers of a new religion to foreign, strange or alien regions, nor as mere refugees. There is evidence to show that as early as the beginning of the fourth century before Christ, that is, several decades before Bhadrabāhu I's historic migration to south India. And in course of time the new creed also gradually diffused throughout the length and breadth of India, and even beyond its frontiers almost in all the directions, although only occasionally and to a small extent.
No gainsaying that the Jaina monks lacked the proselytising zeal of the Buddhist, principally due to certain factors inherent in their renunciation, based philosophy and ascetic discipline. These, at the same time, enabled Jainism to survive and keep its integrity to this day notwithstanding serious rivalries which were at times accompanied even by violent persecutions at the hands of followers of the other religious systems. It was not so with Buddhism, which though succeeded in spreading over the greater part of Asia, was almost completely wiped out of India, its land of birth, by the end of the first millennium A.D. Royal Patronage and Popular Support
In the time of Mahāvīra, the greater part of India was divided among sixteen premier states, the more importnat of which were the monarchical kingdoms of Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti, and the republican confederacies of the Vajjis and the Mallas. The member clans of the confederacies together