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INTRODUCTION
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adoration of Siddhan Namaha or Nama Sıddebhyaha was prevalent among the non-Jainas also especially in South India where the people when they begin their daily work in school are taught to start with this salutation Siddhan Namaha .
The Age of Jainism.—There is a good deal of incorrect views prevalent among even educated people as to the age of Jainism It is an unfortunate fact that Indians had to learn their history from foreign scholars Foreign writers with incorrect and insufficient knowledge of the Indian historical background wrote textbooks on Indian history which provided the historic information to Indian student in Schools. These history text-books were mainly nesponsible for a good deal of erroneous views prevalent among the educated Indians as to the past history of their land One of these deplorable errors is the view that Jainism is an off-shoot of Buddhism and Hinduism This error we are glad to say is no more prevalent among the oriental scholars both in the West and East though the error persists among the educated Indians whose knowledge of history is not uptodate The oligin of this errot is to be found in the fact that the founder of Buddhism Goutama Sakyamuni and Mahavira Vardhama the last of the Jaina Thirthankaras were contemporaries. Buddhistic literature contains references to Mahavira and his followers, and similarly Taina literature composed at the time of Mahavira contains, cross references to Buddha and his religion. Persons who studied first the Buddhist literature and who had no knowledge of Jaina scripture come to the hasty conclusion that Jainism must have been the branch of Buddhism Later on when oriental scholars came to study the subject they corrected their erroneous views and were constrained to call that Jainism must have been earlier than Buddhism. As a matter of fact, Buddha was a younger contemporary of Lord Mahavira. Buddha himself in his conversation with his friend and disciple Sariputta, narrates the fact that he himself in his carlier days was adopting Jaina practice of austerity which he had to give up because of the rigorous discipline which he did not like. The date of Mahavira's parnirvana, 527 B.C is accepted as a land mark in the history of India. According to Cambridge history of India, the 23rd
