Study in the Origins and Development of Jainism

Author(s): S N Shrivastava
Publisher: Rekha Publication Gorakhpur

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A Study in the Origins and Development of Jainism
appears to be true is that the doctrine of karma and transmigration was grafted into the existing Brāhmaṇical tradition when the contact between the Brāhmaṇa and śramaņa traditions was established and the process of intermingling had started.
Thus, the theory of the Vedic origin of the doctrine of karma and transmigration is not historically maintainable. Tribal or Non-Aryan Origin :
The absence of a clear statement about the doctrine of karma and rebirth in the Vedas has led a number of scholars to speculate the tribal or non-Aryan origin of the doctrine of karma and rebirth. A. L. Basham writes, - “The theory of transmigration must have been developed from older animist theories very widespread among primitive peoples, and its first propagators may have been non-Aryans stimulated by the invaders to develop their cruder ideas of metempsychosis by giving them an ethical basis in the form of karma. 16 In the same vein Padmanabha S. Jaini writes, 'perhaps the entire concept that a person's situation and experiences are, infact, the results of deeds committed in various lives may not be of Aryan origin at all, but rather may have developed as part of the indigenous Gangetic tradition from which the various Śramana movements arose"7. Gananāth Obeyeskere has dwelt upon this problem at some length and tried to give logical and evidential basis of this conclusion. The main idea underlying this assumption is that the Śramaņa religions originated out of the indigenous Gangetic tradition and are nonAryan. The reasons for the assumption that the Śramana tradition is of non-Aryan roots are precisely ;(1) it had antagonistic attitude to the Brāhmaṇical tradition, (2) its locus classicus was the Gangetic region and not Brahmavarta.
In support of the tribal origin of the doctrine of karma and rebirth, it is stated that rebirth theories were wide spread in tribal peoples in