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TWO MISCONCEPTIONS
THE
HE two points on which the greatest confusion has prevailed amongst modern thinkers, concerning Jainism, are its origin and the doctrine of sallekhana, which is deemed to encourage suicide.
As to the first of these points it was held at one time, not very long ago, by early Orientalists that Jainism was an offshoot of Buddhism, and arose about the sixth century A.D. with the decline of that faith in India, and after attaining to the highest prosperity in the twelfth century, fell itself into decline thereafter. Today hardly any one can be found who will endorse that view. For a vast literature has been discovered which leaves no room for doubt as to the existence of Jainism prior to Buddhism. Some thinkers now hold that it was founded by Mahavira, a senior contemporary of Gotama Buddha. the world-famous founder of Buddhism. But the better-informed investigators do not accept this view, and are inclined to hold that Jainism was flourishing long before Mahavira. Some hasty thinkers, however, even today hold it to have risen, as a dissenting creed, from Hinduism, and to have been founded by Parasvanath, the twenty-third Tirthamkara, according to the Jaina enumeration. These writers, of course, hold the earlier Tirthamkaras, beginning with Rishabha Deva, the first, to be purely imaginary beings.
But it is a mistake to suppose that the Jainas are Hindu dissenters or that Jainism arose with Mahavira. Had that been so, the Hindus would never have said about it that it was founded by Rishabha Deva, the son of Nabhiraja, who was the third manu. The Hindu teaching about the manus is that there are fourteen of them, and they appear at the commencement of creation. This is simply fatal to the notion that Jainism was founded by Mahavira, or by Parasvanath who preceded Mahavira by 250 years, within the historical times. The Hindu conceptions of creation, manus and the like may or may not be correct, scientific or adequate, but the fact remains-and it is an important fact that the Hindus know of no other personage than
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