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Jain Education
Dr. V. Sakuntala
Religion and education go hand in glove in the beginning. Religion as a predominant factor forces itself on wider arena when education becomes an instrument to aid its aims. In other words, education is a pre-requisite for the Propagation of religion. If a new religious order, after some time, springs up in the same soil, it experiences difficulties to find its way through the public, as it has to successfully encounter the existing religious tenets if it were to establish its own tenets. Even to fulfill this purpose, education becomes an essential tool. Same was the case in India when Jainism sprouted up some time between the fifth and sixth centuries BC; a period which characterized with the coming up of different types of monastic orders like Jainism, Buddhism, the Ajivikas', etc. Scholars usually put forward the reasons for the off shooting of the various orders. Discontentment among the people, created by the supremacy of the existing order is said to be one of the main reasons for the establishment of a new order. Brahmanism could not escape this criticism when Jainism raised its head. The denial of Sanyasa to the fourth caste, through which one can attain Moksa in Brahmanism, is thought of as one of the main reasons for the discontentment among people. Parsva and Mahavira Jainism, though historically came into limelight from the time of Mahavira, seems to have had a hoary past. But its historicity could not be traced. According to the Jain to Mahavira is the twenty-fourth Tirthankara in the line. Some two hundred and fifty years before Mahavira and Parsvanatha occupied the place of a Tirthankara. Mahavira was inspired by the tenets propagated by Parsvanatha. The first twenty-two Tirthankaras became so far mythological persons as their history still lies in obscurity. As such, a definite history of the Jains becomes available from the time of Parsvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara. Scholars like Colebrooke, Stevenson, Edward Thomas, Jarl Charpentier, etc. are also of the same opinion.
While Parsvanatha taught four Dharmas Mahavira added one more Dharma to make it five and propagated the five Dharmas of Jainism. In this connection, Charpentier observes,
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