difficult for a starving population to support a huge body of mendicants during famine years, and as the monks were homeless and wanderers by profession, it was only sensible that they should wander where food was more plentiful. Now it is probable, as we have seen, that Mahāvīra’s community or saṅgha had been formed by the union of two orders of mendicants, one clothed and one naked. This difference, being outward and visible, would be always liable to recur and cause schism, and probably the fusion of the two orders had never been complete, so that the famine sufficed to sever the community along the lines of the old division.
Sthūlabhadra.Part of the community, numbering, the Jaina say, twelve thousand, went with Bhadrabāhu to the south of India where famine had not penetrated, whilst the other part, also amounting to twelve thousand, remained behind under the leadership of Sthūlabhadra. Sthūlabhadra was the son of Śakaḍāla, who had been prime minister to the ninth Nanda king; on his father’s death he was offered the post, but renounced that and all earthly love to become an ascetic.
It was naturally only the more vigorous monks who undertook the long journey to Southern India, and perhaps the older and more infirm ascetics who remained at home had already been allowed to wear some clothing as a concession to their infirmities; the habit of so doing[1] would have been likely now to become general amongst them. Thus one element of division was established amongst the Jaina, that of difference in practice, and it only remained, in order to make the division permanent, that they should have a differing sacred literature. Experience has shown what a unifying force a common sacred literature has on divergent sects, and the converse is also true. For example, it is probably only their refusal to accept the Veda as sacred which has prevented the Jaina from being long ago amalgamated
- ↑ They seem generally to have worn white garments.
