July, 1873.] THE JAINS. 197 cided indeed whether Dhanesvara was the au¬ thor of the Satruhjayaindhdtmya, or whether a later writer has made use of his name in writing the history of his sect; I prefer, however, the second supposition, because in the passages where Dhanesvara appears as the teacher of S11 a d i t y a he is mentioned in the third person.* * * § * * After this estimate of the value of the Satrurijayamdhutmya, I am unable also to place much faith in the time of the death of Vira nar¬ rated in it. According to it he died 947 years before the first year of S i 1 a d i t y a * s reign, which event took place according to that book a.d. 555.f Accordingly Vira would have died 392 B. C. This decision would place the Jaina sect back in too early an age, as any disin¬ terested person can easily see. According to other data, this man, who is so prominent in the traditions of the Jainas, departed this life 980 years before a.d. 411 ; in which year Bha- dr aba hu published his Kalpasutra, that is, during the reign ofDhruvasena.J Accord¬ ing to this determination the death of Vira must have taken place 569 b. c. But accord¬ ing to the inscriptions Dhruvasena reigned from about 632 till 650, so that that celebrated Tirthankara must have died in 358 B.C.§ This conclusion also would make the beginning of the separation of the Jainas from the Baud¬ dhas too early, and it must be reserved to later discoveries to ascertain accurately this period. Approximately, I propose to place the first be¬ ginnings of the Jaina doctrine about the 1st or 2nd century after Christ. In this it must not be overlooked that to Mahavira a large share in the propagation of the religious doctrine represented by him must also be assigned; he had most probably a real precursor, the 23rd Jina, i.e. Parsvanatha, aud is also called Vardhamana.||
- See above, p. 195.
f See above, p. 195. From the reasons adduced above, it follows that I cannot agree with tho calculation proposed by A. Weber (passim, p. 12), according to which V i r a died 947 years before 598 a.d., i. e. 349. I shall again below return to a second determination of this event. X J. Stevenson’s preface to his edition of this book, p. ix. Hitherto this book is the oldest in the literature of the Jainas, the age of which can be accurately ascer¬ tained. § On the time of the reign of this sovereign, see Ind. Ali. III. pp. 520, 521. || A short account of his life occurs Li Wilson’s Sketch of the Religious Sect3 of the Hindus, in As. Res. XVII. p. 251 seqq. As is usual in similar narratives, here also fictions are commingled with tho truth. After this, of course, merely approximative determination of tbe beginning of the Jaina doctrine, I proceed to set forth the most impor¬ tant arguments for their Buddhist origin. For this origin, first of all, two names vouched for by them testify, i. e. Jaina and Arhata, the former being a derivation from an oft-used name of Buddha, i.e. Jina, and the latter desig¬ nates not merely one of the highest degrees of the Buddhist hierarchy, but also Buddha him¬ self, Further, the Jainas assume 24 Jinas, in which particular they agree with the Bud¬ dhists, who also specially point out just as many Buddhas.* That the names are different among tho Jainas does not invalidate the com¬ parison. Of the other names of Jina only two more need be pointed out here, i. e. Sarvajna, omniscient, and Sugata, which are applied also to Buddha. On the other hand, the Jainas have attempted an approach to the Brahmans by attributing to their Supreme Being the name Tirthankara; it designated merely the preparer of a tirtha, or holy place of pilgrimage, whilst the Buddhists applied to their antagonists the name Tirthya and Tirthika. A second coincidence between the Jainas and the Bauddhas manifests itself in the circumstance that the former pay divine homage also to mortal men, namely, to their teachers, and erect statues to them in their temples; this is special¬ ly tho casef with the 23rd Jina or Tirthankara Parsvanatha, as will afterwards appear. This coincidence is no doubt an appropriation on the part of the Jainas. The same holds good also— and this is a third agreement between the two religions—of the great value which the Jainas attribute to the ahinsd, i. e. non-lesion of all living beings. Some of their Yatis or pious men go so far in this respect that they sweep the streets in which they walk with a broom On this degree see Ind. Alt. II. p. 541, and Boehtlingk and Roth’s Sanskrit Worterbuche under the word arhat.
- See Colebrooke (passim ) in his Misc. Essays, IT. p.
297,Wilson {passim) in /Is. Res. XVII. p. 250, and J. Foley’s Notes on the Buddha from Cingalese authorities, and iu J. of the As. S. of Beng. V. p. 321. The 24 Ba uddhas are considered tho predecessors of the historical Buddha. A list of the 24 Jinas or Tirtliankaras, with notices of their acts and duration of their lives, occurs in Colebrookc’s Misc. Ess. II. p. 207 seqq. and Wilson As. Res. XVII. p. 220. [And a moro extended account in the second of these papers, supra, p. 134.J f It is scarcely necessary to correct this mistake, founded on the somew'hat loose statements of early writers. At Sa- truujaya, Adin&tha or Rishabhadevais probably most frequently represented, and he, together with Neini- nfitha, and Mah&vtra appear to be general favourites in Gujarat and Rajputana.—Ed.
