Religion and Culture of the Jains

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

Page 47

HISTORY OF JAINISM AFTER MAHĀVĪRA
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numerous artistic monuments scattered all over India. Jainism was diffused in almost all the parts of the country and among practically all the classes and castes inhabiting it.
During the three and half centuries of the Turkish sultanate, when several dynasties, like the Slave, Khalji, Tughluq, Saiyid, Lodi and Sur, successively ruled from Delhi, and a number of provincial sultanates sprang up in different parts of India, Jainism faired no worse, if no better, than Hinduism or any other surviving Indian religion. Islām was the state religion and the Muslims the chosen of the God, while all others were called Kātirs or heretics.
Yet, Jainism, being a non-aggressive and peaceful religion and its followers in the Muslim-governed territories being now mostly confined to the banking, trading and merchant classes and thus forming a very small but valuable and influential minority, enjoyed a fair amount of tolerance. They could build their temples, celebrate their festivals and make pilgrimages to their sacred places in large groups, for which they were generally able to obtain firmāns from the rulers or their officers. Their monks could also move about more or less freely, and established their pontiafical seats in Delhi and many other capital towns and important centres.
It was also in this period that each of the two major sects, the Digambara and the Svetāmbara, developed several important subsects which have survived to this day. If the Tāranapanthīs and Lonkāgacchīs (or Sthānakavāsīs), in order to save the religion from falling unnecessarily a victim to the iconoclastic zeal of the rulers, advocated against temple and image worship, the Bhattārakas and Yatis caused many temples built and numerous images made and consecrated. In one instance alone, in 1460-91 A.D., thousands of new images were made and distributed to the Jaina temples all over India, hundreds of them exististing even tody.