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Jainism
is one of the oldest religions in the world, so old that we cannot
with certainty date its beginnings. Jain tradition tells that
Mahavira twenty-fourth and last of the Tirthankara
or Prophets of the current cycle of the time.
Some of the stories about them are truly amazing and non-Jains
are rarely convinced. They are credited with enormously long spans
of life and gigantic size and various other miraculous attributes.
Leaving aside the stories (which are valuable if regarded as
edifying stories), we have some historical details about some of
them. The first Tirthankara was Risabha and there are some accounts
in non-Jain records which seem to fit in with the broad details of
Jain tradition. He is recorded as a king of some ability who gave up
his throne to become a wandering ascetic, going around naked (a
symbol of total renunciation of worldly possessions) and frequently
scorned or attacked by the ignorant. After Risabha, Jain tradition
gives us the names and some details if the next twenty Tirthankara.
They were all men except perhaps the nineteenth, Malli, who is said
to have been a woman (though this is not accepted by all Jains.) The
twenty-second, Neminatha or Aristanemi (both names are found) is
said to have been a relative and contemporary of the Hindu God hero
Krishna.
With the twenty-third Tirthankara, Parsva, modern scholars fins themselves on stronger ground. He is
recorded as the son of the king of Varanasi (Benares), the greatest
holy city in India. He renounced the worlds at the age of thirty and
after a fairly brief period of meditation and austerity he attained
enlightenment. Thereafter he preached his message and gathered
followers around him. He died, reputedly at the age of 100, passing
to his final abode of bliss as a liberated soul. This was about 250
years before the time of Mahavira: Mahavira's parents were followers
of the religion of Parsva. He taught four of the five great moral
precepts of Jainism, non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing and
non-acquisitiveness, omitting, for reasons which have been disputed,
the vow of sexual restraint which was introduced or reintroduced by
Mahavira. So with Parsva the Jain religion emerges clearly into the
light of history, through darkness falls again in the period between
the attainment of moksha or liberation by Parsva in the Parasanatha
Hills (in Bihar) around 780 B.C.
A great many people were impressed by Mahavira's
personality and his teachings so that when his life on earth ended
he left behind a large number of people (reputed to be as many as a
third of a million) who were trying in various ways, in the vocation
of Monk (sadhu)
or nun (sadhvi)
or as lay men (shravaka)
and women (shravika),
to follow the principles of Jainism. In his lifetime Mahavira
appointed eleven leaders (ganadhara)
among his followers. Only two of them, Indrabhudi Gautama and
Sudharman were
alive at the time of Mahavira's mokshamoksa
and it was to Sudharman that the task fell of preserving and passing
on the teachings of their master, and leading the community, when
Mahavira was no longer with them.The order of nuns was headed by
Chandana. She had been placed in this position by Mahavira: nuns
have always had a important place in Jainism and it is said that the
nuns under Chandana outnumbered the Jain monks of the time by more
than two to one.
Mahavira and his early followers lived in north-eastern
part of India, mainly in ancient kingdom of Magadh (in modern
Bihar). Jain missionaries visited Kashmir and even Nepal but it was
not until several centuries after Mahavira that Gujarat and the
western part of India became the major center of Jainism as it is
today. However Jainism spread southwards from Magadha into the
kingdom of Kalinga (in modern Orissa) whose ruler became a convert.
This king, Kharavela, lived in the second or third B.C. We learn from
an inscription that he was a pious Jain and provided for monks but
he appears to not to have have seen military expeditions
as incompatible with his religion. This area became an important
centre of Jainism in the earlier centuries, though we must not
forget that we are speaking several hundred years after Mahavira.
Much in Indian history of this period is not yet completely clear to
historians and the spread of Jainism has to be pieced together from
scattered, and sometimes cryptic, references. However, for the
first centuries it is clear that the centres of this religion were
in eastern India. There seem to have been Jains in Bengal from very
early times.
The teachings of Jainism made a considerable impact
amongst all classes of society. There is even a story that the great
emperor Chandragupta Maurya, around 300 B.C.,
became a Jain monk at
the end of his life. Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka, ruled over an
empire which included all the sub-continent except the extreme
south. As his capital was in the region of Magadha he was doubtless
familiar with the Jains and they are mentioned in his records
(though Ashoka himself was a Buddhist). However, one of Asoka's
grandsons was certainly a Jain and he did a lot to further the
progress of his faith.
In a religion as ancient as Jainism it is natural that
interesting controversies about details of the faith emerge.
Whilst Jains are united on the fundamental questions, within that
unity many different sects and schools of thought co-exist in a
tolerant manner. These may be the followers of one revered teacher
or a group placing emphasis on certain particular teachings. The
important division is between the Svetambara
and the Digambara
sections. 'Svetambara' means 'dressed in white' and 'Digambara'
means 'dressed in the sky', a reference to the fact that Digambara
monks renounce all worldly possessions, including clothes, whilst
the monks of the Svetambara section wear two pieces of white cloth.
The Svetambara (who form probably around two-thirds of all Jains,
and the very large majority of those in the United Kingdom) are
found in particular in Gujarat and the neighboring
areas of Western
India. The Digambara are strongest in South India. The origins of the
split are not clear. One account says that, probably some three
hundred years B.C., there was a terrible famine in Bihar. The crops
failed, people were dying of starvation and this went on for twelve
years. Some of the Jain monks, led by Bhadrabahu, moved southwards
away from the famine area. It is said that the monks who left were
more rigorous in certain ways than those who stayed behind and when,
after the famine was over, they came back it was found that the two
groups had drifted apart in some ways. In particular, according to
this account, before this time all Jain monks went naked but
those who stayed in the north had now taken to wearing a single
piece of cloth to cover themselves. Other accounts place the
division much later, possibly as late as the second century A.D.
Quite probably it was not a sudden split but a slow process. At any
rate, to this day the Svetambara and the Digambara differ on certain
minor matters, not only the clothing of monks but also such
questions as whether a woman can achieve moksha (the Digambara say
not until she is reborn as a man), whether Mahavira was married
before he gave up the world, and some other points.
In these early centuries, of course, reading and
writing were not as common as they are today, and religious
teachings (and indeed all other literature, history, stories and
songs) were preserved in the memory of people. Mahavira's closest
followers must have committed to memory the things which he said in
his preachments and after he left them the responsibility of passing
on the teachings fell on the new leader of the community, Sudharman,
whom we have mentioned above. For nearly two centuries the
collected teachings were handed down by word of mouth. It seems
wonderful to us today that a man could retain in his memory the
fourteen Purva
texts, each of them quite a lengthy work, which made up the basic
part of the sacred literature of the Jains. But the Jain monks of
those early centuries lived a much simpler life than we do
today without the distractions of our complicated modern
civilization. Moreover they doubtless did train their memories
for the repetition of long texts. Even so it appears that memories
were not infallible and only ten of the fourteen Purva texts were
still known 200 years after Mahavira. They have now all been
lost, though much of their teaching (which was said to go back in
part to the time of Parsva) was preserved in other texts, like the
twelve Anga
texts, eleven of which survive to this day.
The last man who knew all the scriptures by heart
was Bhadrabahu and he died 170 years after Mahavira. About that
time, around 360 B.C., the Jains were concerned that the memory of
the holy scriptures might get lost. It was a difficult time in parts
of India with a long famine and the death or dispersal of many
monks. Hence a great conference of monks was held at Pataliputra
(now called Patna, in Bihar) when the contents of the sacred texts
(those which had not been lost) were put in order. Not all Jains
believe today that the original scriptures have survived. The
Digambara in general feel that the original texts eventually
disappeared from knowledge over a fairly long period of time. Some
modern scholars believe that some re-editing of the texts must have
taken place so that they are not exactly in the original form. Many
centuries after the conference at Pataliputra another conference was
held at Valabhi, around 460 A.D. when all the sacred scriptures were
finally written down, the twelve Anga texts representing the
oldest section, with a further thirty-four works which are recognize
as rather later in time. There is no doubt that, in spite of
some differences of opinion about it, the Jains still have today a
collection of ancient religious literature which contains the noble
teaching of Mahavira as it was followed two thousand and more years
ago. For a very long time these scriptures were studied only by
monks and learned men. The language in which they were compiled,
called Ardha Magadhi
,
was once the language of ordinary people in Magadha so that the
teachings of Mahavira (who preached in this language) could be
understood by them. But Ardha Magadhi died out as a spoken language
and only scholars could understood it (though most Jains today know
at least some of the ancient prayers in the beautiful and solemn
ancient tongue). In recent years, however, many of the Jain writings
have been translated into modern Indian languages, as well as into
English and other European languages, so that with little trouble we
can obtain and read them today.
We have been talking about matters which cover
many, many centuries of time. Generation after generation passed, of
people much like ourselves, even though they lived two thousand and
more years ago. They had the same hopes and fears, the same
joys and sorrows. And like Jains everywhere today they had the
teachings of Mahavira to guide and support them.
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