Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 81

LAST WORD
Was Rishabha or Vrashbha an historical personage? This is the question which is generally answered in the negative, and Rishabha, the first Tirthankara of the Jainas, passed over as a shadowy person. The chief reason for this is the very remote antiquity of the founder of Jainism-His life time goes much anterior to that of Rama and Lakshamana, while the history of India has been assumed to begin with the 8th or 10th Century B. C. But how can this assumption be relied upon now, when the literary and epigraphical evidence is available to push back the beginning of the ancient history of India, not by decades but centuries. The Jaina and Buddhistic literature of the Mauryan period and the antiquities of Mohanjodaro and Harappa cannot be overlooked in this respect. 1 Only the other day it was pointed out by Prof. Pran Nath of the Hindu University that a copper-plate belonging to the period of Babylonian dynesty mentions the name of Neminath, the 22nd Tirthankara, of the Jainas. 2 This means that the real history of India and the beginning of Jainism go back much further than the 10th Century B C.
Under the circumstances, sound scholarship demands the reviewing of the ancient traditions of the Puranas with greater respect and if we do that we shall find that we cannot be justified in passing by the great personality of Rishabha as a myth.
1. Mohan-jo-Daro, Vol. I pp 1-354. 2. Times of India, 19th March 1935.