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94
The Unknown Pilgrims
The arhat Ariştanemi had a community of surpassing worth [consisting) of forty-four thousand äryikās with Ārya Yakșini at their head. 3
Is it possible to discover the very beginnings of the first śramanas and śramaņis? Did the Jaina ascetic movement arise all of a sudden in social and historical circumstances that would explain its radicalism, or rather did it come about slowly, borrowing from other similar movements? Is it possible to search for and fix even approximately a period in which this movement started? Is it possible to find any traces of the tirtharkaras? These are all important questions to which many investigators, especially historians and exegetes, have sought to reply, but hesitantly, without making very much headway, for the basic elements are lacking which would enable them to make a pronouncement on a distant past of which we have practically no knowledge. Certain scholars have expressed the opinion that the Jaina ascetic movement emerged from an autochthonous religion of some pre-Aryan date and that its cradle was probably the Gangetic plain of the East of the country.4 Quite a number of others have considered
3 arahao naṁ Aritthanemissa atthårasa gană atthārasa ganaharā huttha. arahao... Varadattapāmokkhão atthārasa samaņasāhassio ukkosiyā samanasampayā hottthā, arahao... ajjaJakkhiņipamokkhão cattālisaṁ ajjiyāsāhassio ukkosiyā ajjiyāsaṁpayā hotthā. KS 166.
4 "I am inclined to postulate a great Magadhan religion, indigenous in its essential traits, that must have flourished on the banks of the Ganges, in eastern India, long before the advent of the Aryans into central India; and possibly at the end of the Brāhmaṇa period these two streams of Aryan and indigenous thought met each other, and the mutual interaction resulted on the one hand in the Upanişads in which Yajñavalkya and others are, for the first time, preaching Atmavidyā and on the other, in contrast to the Vedic ritualistic form of religion practised by the masses, in Jainism and Buddhism that came prominently to the fore as the strong representatives of the great heritage of Magadhan Religion." Upadhye, PSa, Introd. p. 90. Renou, speaking more generally, makes a similar hypothesis: "Jaina asceticism grew up out of a background of pan-Indian, or perhaps pre-Indian, asceticism, which can be traced also in Buddhism, though Buddhism early repudiated it." Renou, 1953a, p. 126. Cf. also J.P. Jain, 1951, on the subject of Jainism, the most ancient of all religions, with supporting references
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