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Prelude
95
this movement to be not an original phenomenon, but an adaptation of certain forms of asceticism borrowed from Brahmanism and incorporated into a new system, or perhaps a reaction against this same Brahmanism.5 Archaeologists also hold slightly differing opinions; U.P. Shah, who is an authority on all questions concerning Jaina art, gives no clear verdict, but tends to think that further research might well permit a more conclusive opinion.
However, the opinion of historians, exegetes and archaeologists is not the only valid one. What does tradition tell us, that tradition which the ascetics and followers of the Jaina dharma have handed on through the centuries? This tradition is an immensely rich one in which the improbable and the real exist side by side, in which a certain thread of continuity is visible age after age and in which there is a remarkable consistency as regards the basic doctrines and their implementation in practice. The Jaina is constantly required to opt for those values that are essential ones: self-mastery, respect for all beings, detachment from material things by a constant effort towards interiorisation - a detachment which is maintained through the practice of asceticism and through study of the teaching. Oral tradition seeks always to hark back to the dawn of time, to a far-distant undefinable period, that of the first beginnings, when men were aware of an intensity of cosmic life surrounding them, at one and the same time hidden and yet palpable. This highly sensitive awareness of life at its fullest, which
5 Cf. Deo, 1956, pp. 44-56, where all similar hypotheses and also other points of view are systematically reviewed.
6 "Pre-historic sites in India do not lend any definite clue to the existence of Jainism. A few seals from Mohen-jo-Daro showing human figures standing in a posture closely analogous to the free-standing meditative pose (kayotsarga-mudra) of the Jinas, or the seal representing a male divinity seated in meditation, the prototype of Śiva, corresponding with later Jaina, Buddhist or Brahmanical sculptures in such postures, cannot in the present state of uncertainly of the reading of the Indus Valley script be definitely used as attesting to the Pre-historic antiquity of Jaina art or ritual." U.P. Shah, 1955, p.3.
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