Veer Vibhuti

Author(s): Nyayavijay
Publisher: Jain Tapagaccha Sangh Pedhi

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religion; He challenged their caste system, He challonged the superiority of the Brābmanas, to challenged their sacrifices, and He challenged their immolation of animals op a large scale.
In His time there were no less than sixty schools of thought, kdown, of course by the Orthodoxy, as 'heretical schools, headed by sixty 'heretical' teachers, each with new dogmas, each having a large following, and each patting ap a strong fight against the Orthodoxy, that is to say, Brāhmanism. How, in the coarse of time, these schools booame extinct, or morgod in other more powerful religions, history doos not tell, but we know that two among them, Buddhism and Jainism, grew subsequently to be the most enduring and powerful of the Indian religious systems. Mahāvira and Buddha played a very important part in inaugurating two sew lines of thought, and thus their lives will always have a perennial interest for all Indians so long as there are Indians living on this soil.
The rigidity of the caste system, and tho Brāhma. nical ascendancy in the time of Mahārira, tendod, in a great degree to drown the intellectual celebrities of rival sects, and to stifle independent thinking, coming from, what the Brāhmanas considered to be the lower stratum of society. The Vrātya, and others not belonging to the social system of the Brāhmanas did not tolerate this, and they boldly proclaimed independence, with what result we all know. This is how India became the homeland of three great religions systems which