Temple of Satrunjaya

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 17

the sake of some readers to give a short notice of the sect whose members have erected its hundreds of temples. The Jainas or Sravakas are to be found in most of the large towns of the lower Ganges and in Rajputana, but they are most numerous in Gujarat, Dharwad, and Mysore. As their name implies, they are followers of the Jinas or ‘vanquishers' of sinsmen whom they believe to have obtained nirvāņa or emancipation from the continual changes of transmigration. With them life, —which they do not distinguish from 'soul'—and its vehicle, matter, are both uncreated and imperishable, obeying eternal physical laws, with which asceticism and religious ceremonial alone can interfere. Their ceremonial has therefore no real reference to a Supreme Personal God, and their doctrine excludes His Providence. This at once points to their connection with the Buddhists ; indeed there can be little doubt that they are an early heretical sect of that persuasion, and probably owed part of their popularity, on the decline of the purer Bauddha doctrine, to their readier admission of the worship of some of the favourite Hindu divinities into their system, and their retention of the tyranny of caste customs. But much of their phraseology is of Bauddha origin: thus, their laity are called Sravakas, -hearers', the same name as among the most ancient Buddhists is applied to those who 'practise the four realities and suppress the errors of thought and sight, without being able to enamancipate themselves entirely from the influence of passion and prejudice', but 'who, solely occupied with their own salvation, pay no regard to that of other men'. Then the Buddha is constantly spoken of as the Jina or 'vanquisher'; his exit from existence-like that of the Jaina Tirthankaras-is his nirvāna; both employ the svastika or sähkiyā as a sacred symbol; the sacred language of the Buddhists is Magadhi, -of the Jainas Arddha-Magadhi; the temples of both sects are caityas; those who have attained perfection are Arhans; and Digambaras or naked ascetics, were of Bauddha, as well as of Jaina sect.2 Further, the Jainas indicate South Bihar as the scene of the life and labours of nearly all their Tirthankaras, as it was of Sakya Sinha. Buddha is often called Mahavira--the name of the last Tirthankara, whose father the Jainas call Siddhartha the 'establisher of faith'—the proper name of Buddha, and both are of the race of Iksvaku; and Mahavira's wife was Yasoda, as Buddha's was Yasodhara. Moreover Mahavira is said to have died at Paya, in Bihar, about 527 B.C., and Gautama Buddha between Pava and Kusinara, in 543 B.C.3 These coincidences, together
2 Conf. Hodgson's Illustrations of Buddhism, pp. 42, 213. * The Singhalese Buddhists specify twenty-four Buddhas, before Gautama, the same number as that of the Tirthankaras or Jinas. Conf. Mahanama in his Tika, in Turnour's Mahavansa, Introd. [8vo. pp. Ixii-lxv] 4 vo. pp. xxxii-xxxiv; Hardy's Buddhism, p. 94. Compare also the first six chapters of the Kalpa Sutra with Bigandet's Legend of Gautama.