Studies in South Indian Jainism

Author(s): M S Ramaswami Ayyangar, B Seshagiri Rao
Publisher: M S Ramaswami Ayyangar

Page 27

„SCHOLARS OPINIONS. 11 of Buddha's and died at Pāvā where the last Tirthakara is said to have attained Nirvāna, caused me to accept the view that, the Jainas and the Buddhists sprang from the same religious movement. My supposition was confirmed by Jacobi, who reached the like view by another course, independently of mine (see Zeitschrift der Deutsch Morg. Ges. Bd. XXXV, S. 669. Note 1), pointing out that the last Tīrthakara in the Jaina canon bears the same name as among them Buddhistio Since the publication of our results in the Ind. ant. Vol. VII, p. 143, and in Jacobi's introduction to his edition of the Kalpasūtra, which have been further verified by Jacobi with great penetration, views on this question have been divided. Oldenberg, Kern, Hoernle, and others have accepted this view without hesitation, while A. Weber (Indische Studien Bd. XVI, S. 240) and Barth (Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, tom. III, p. 90) keep to their former standpoint. The latter do not trust the Jaina tradition and believe it probable that the statements in the same are falsifted. There are certainly great difficulties in the way of accepting such a position especially the improbability that the Buddhists should have forgotten the fact of the defection of their hated enemy. Meanwhile this is not absolutely impossible as the oldest preserved Jaina canon had its first authentic edition only in the fifth or sixth
century of our era, and as yet the proof is • wanting that the Jainas, in ancient times,