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Jaina Šramana Tradition from Adinatha to Pārsvanätha
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146
so would be to watch the female one. The dull disciples, however, could not reason like this and stayed back to watch her tricks and showed their ignorance when asked by the guru."24 The explanatory literature attributes the watching of the female artist to the disciples' dullness, however, I feel that no one could be so stupid. This could happen only due to the clever manipulation of the guru's instructions by a crooked mind. I, therefore, hold the view that the people of the time of the last
Tirthankara were not dull and crooked but crooked and clever manipulators.
Conclusion
From the above-mentioned discussion we can conclude that the Jaina śramaņa tradition is certainly as old as the Vedic tradition is not older. There is sufficient evidence to prove its ancient origins. That the Śramanic traditions of the times of various Tirthankaras differed from each other in some details but as far as the basic spiritual considerations were concerned, they were the same. References : 1. Arhat Caityavandan, Panca Pratikrmanasūtra, Jaina Bandhu
Printing Press, Indore 2021 Vik. Era, verse 3, p. 86. 2. "Ādimaṁ Prthvinatham ca, ādimaṁ Nisparigrahaml
Ādimam Tirthanātham ca, Śrī Rsabhāsvāminaṁ stumaḥll" 3. Jainism In Global Perspective, PV, Varanasi, 2000. 4. This may sound surprising but only recently a demographic
investigator has surmised that if the population growth remains unchecked for another thousand years the fourth millennium may see a world population where houses of a thousand storeys and more may be required to house such immense population. In the Jaina context we are talking of a time yet about forty thousand
years hence. 5. Kalpasūtra, Upādhyāya Pyarcandji, Beawar, 2029 Vik. Era, p. 207. 6. i Pūrva is equivalent to 8400,000x8400,000 years. 7. Kalpasūra, ibid, p. 4-5. 8. Ibid, p. 4:
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