Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

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

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Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India
ing on such evidence alone. In fact the name Rşabha is found in the Mahābhārata both as king, and as an ascetic. The great epic also refers to a tirtha after the name of Rşabha, which lay in the Ayodhya region, the birth-place of the first tirthankara.23
The Bhāgava ta-purāņa"* gives us a detailed information including the lineage of the first tirthankara of the Jainas, Rşabhanātha. He led a married life for some time and one of his sons was the famous Bharata. A few years later he led an ascetic life having discarded the practice of wearing clothes. Elsewhere the same Purāņa?5 describes that he was initiated into asceticism directly as an Paramaharsa, the highest stage in asceticism. He is also described as an incarnation (avatāra) of Višņu.” It seems that the first Jaina tīrthankara was accepted as an incarnation of Vişnu by the Hindus as early as the time of the composition of this Purāņa,27 if not carlier, probably at the time when the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, was accepted as an avatāra of the same deity.
It is also to be noted in this connection that the account of the Bhāgavata-purāna about Rsabha's Paramahansa initiation shows the existence of the supreme order of asceticism from the time of inception of this religious order.
Even the antiquity of this tir!hankara, as propounded by some scholars can be surmised from the archaeological evidences too. Thus the kāyotsarga-yoga pose of sitting and standing images engraved on the seals of Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Lothal are identified as Rşabha's images.28 Again if we are to believe the reading of a seal inscription by Pran Nath,29 the prevalence of Jainism at that time is confirmed. However, it is clear that nude images like those of the Digambara Jainas used to be made by the Indus people30 and this goes to establish the greater antiquity of the religious ideas of nudity as held by the Digambara Jainas. Jainism is however, considered as the oldest of non-Aryan group. Zimmer thus opines-“There is truth in the Jaina idea, their religion goe back to the remote antiquity, the antiquity in question being that of the pre-Aryan, so called Dravidian period, which has recently been dramatically disillusioned by the discovery of a series of great Late Stone Age cities in the Indus Valley dating from the third and even perhaps fourth millennium Bc."31
Although Jacobi regarded Pārsvanātha as a historical figure and the founder of Jainism, his further remark relating to this matter is very significant. In his opinion “there is nothing to prove that