Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

Author(s): Pranabananda Jash
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

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CHAPTER ONE
The Parivrājakas
THE Jaina Parivrājakas rather the Parivrajaka sect in general is undoubtedly one of the most significant and fascinating subjects of research to the scholars of Indological studies. The term Parivrājaka (a wandering religious mendicant)1 is found mention in the Nirukta and is explained in the early Upanisads as one who takes pravrajya (rejection of the household life) with the object of attaining mokşa (Brāhmaṇical concept), nirvāṇa/nibbāna (Buddhist concept) or the Jaina siddhatva or the attainment of liberation. Pravrajya is prescribed as an initiatory ritual though, of course, the details of the ritual differ in various systems of Indian religion and even in various texts of the particular religious school.
The Parivrajakas as a sect, or as an organised community of practice and doctrine, seems to have emerged not before the ascetic-intellectual movements of the sixth-fifth century BC. They, of course, not as a community, but as individuals are frequently mentioned in the pre-Buddhist Brahmanical literatures under different names, such as, Samnyasi, Yati, Tapas, Bhiksu, Muni, Śramaṇa, Vātarasanas, Jațilas, Vaikhānasa, etc. The Parivrājaka sect is organised through the representations of the Brahmaṇical Samnyasi, the Buddhist Bhiksus, the Jaina Yatis, the Ajivika Maskarins, etc. Each system has its own history of growth and development, its schools, sects and sub-sects and their doctrines and tenets, its contribution to the cultural history of the country.
It is, however, to be noted that in the Upanisads the line of demarcation between a Parivrajaka and a Samnyasi or a Yati is not well defined and they are almost identical. The Samnyāsīs like the Parivrājakas are said to have been in the habit of wandering about. Some scholars believed that "the term Samnyasin became denominational in later usage. In the Buddhist and the Jaina legends it is