Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 49

JAINISM
41
Vaishya, that being the enormously predominating caste among the Jainas.
And now with regard to their way of looking at the world for a moment; and then we will consider the great Being, who is spoken of in western orientalism, not by themselves, as the Founder.
They have the same enormous cycles of time that we are familiar with in Hinduism; and it must be remembered that both the Jaina and the Buddhist are fundamentally offshoots from ancient Hinduism; and it would have been better had men not been so inclined to divide, and to lay stress on differences rather than similarities-if both these great offshoots had remained as Darshanas of Hinduism, rather than have separated off into different, and as it were rival, faiths. For a long time among the occidental scholars, Jainism was looked on as derived from Buddhism. That is now admitted to be a blunder and both alike derive from the more ancient Hindu faith; and in truth there are great differences between the Jaina and the Buddhist, although there be also similarities, likenesses of teaching. There is however no doubt at all, if you will permit me to speak positively, that Jainism in India is far older than Buddhism. The last of its great Prophets was contemporary with Shakya Muni, the Lord Buddha; but he was the last of a great succession, and simply gave to Jainism its latest form. I said there were great cycles of time believed in by the Jaina as by the Hindu; and we find that in each vast cycle--which resembles the day and night of Brahma-twenty