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Jains Living Outside India
26
In the countries where Jainism is bad or just a little known numerous wrong things are said or written about it and especially that its followers have never crossed the boundaries of India'. I will give in this paper clear indication of the absolute inaccuracy of such an assertion.
Pierre P. Amiel
Though, near 250 BC, Emperor Ashoka took decrees inducing that Buddhism was quite the state religion in India, its followers were obliged, during a period going from the Xth to the XIIIth century AD, to leave progressively their mother country due to prosecutions by Shivaites, Vishnuites and foreign invaders. Buddhists departed for various other Asian countries where their missionaries had already taken root or were they made themselves progress, like in Ceylon, Tibet, Burma, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan, etc.2
Jain Education International
Near 238 BC, Emperor Samprati, Ashoka's grandson, converted to Jainism, tried at its turn to make it the Indian state religion 3. Jains had a "Golden Age" till the XIIIth century AD but, like the Buddhists, they were further persecuted. Nevertheless, they resisted and succeeded to remain in India. They adopted a low profile and some rituals and customs of their opponents. Some of them became converted to Hinduism but a large majority continued to practice worship at home and to remain faithful to their ancestral creed, even if they were extremely pained to see, at different periods, their temples falling into ruins or being wasted, numerous statues of their venerated beings broken or mutilated, some of their sacred scriptures stolen or burned. Lay Jains preferred to be killed than to betray their vows, especially their "digvrata" and "deshavrata". As concern ascetics, some were killed, some others were obliged to live hidden in cave-temples or in the forests, to abandon absolute nudity as prescribed by Mahavira for the monks, etc.
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