Page:The Indian Antiquary Vol 2.djvu/23

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January, 1873.] B'ATRUNJAYA, Ac. 15 twelve Siva Lingas in India,* and the history of the destruction of which by Mahmud of Ghazni is familiar to every reader of Indian history. Dwarka or Dwaraka, in the extreme west of the peninsula, is the most celebrated of the shrines of Krishna, and where he is fabled to have slain Takshak and to have saved the sacred books. And not to mention Tulsl Syam and places of less note, the sacred hill of Satrunjaya, near Palitana, has probably been a sacred place from the earliest times of the Jaina worship,—a great tirtha—i the first of places of pilgrimage.’ The last of these more immediately concerns us for the present ; but before referring to its his¬ tory or buildings, it may be as well to give some notices of the sect whose members have erected its hundreds of temples. The Jainas or Sravaks are to be found in most of the large towns of the lower Ganges and in Rajputana, but they are most numerous in Guj¬ arat, Dharwad, and Maisur. As their name im¬ plies, they are followers of the Jinas or 1 van¬ quishers * of sins—men whom they believe to have obtained Nirvdna or emancipation from the con¬ tinual changes of transmigration. With them life,—which they do not distinguish from * soul,’ —and its vehicle matter are both uncreated and imperishable, obeying eternal physical laws, with which asceticism and religious ceremonial alone can interfere. Their ceremonial has therefore no real reference to a Supreme Personal God, and their doctrine excludes His Providence. This at once points to their connection with the Buddhists ; indeed there can be little doubt that they are an early heretical sect of the Hina- yana school of that persuasion, and probably owed part of their popularity, on the decline of the purer Bauddha doctrine, to their readier admission of the worship of some of the favour¬ ite Hindu divinities into their system, and their retention of the tyranny of caste customs. But much of their phraseology is of Bauddha origin : thus their laity are called S r a v a k a 8,— 1 hearers,’—the same name as among the most ancient Buddhists is applied to those who ‘ prac¬ tise the four realities and suppress the errors of thought and sight, without being able to eman¬

  • The others were Mallikdrjuna, at S'risailam in Telin-

gana ; Mahdkala at Ujjain ; Omlcara on the Narmada ; Amares'wara near Ujjam ; Vaidyanathy at Deograh in Ben¬ gal, which still exists ; Rameswara at Setubandha in the island of Raines'waram in Madura ; Bhimas'ankara at the source of the Bhima N. W. of Pnn& ; Tryambaka near Nisik ; Gautamesa, unknown ; Kedaresa on the Himalayas; and Visves'toara at Ban&ras. cipate themselves entirely from the influence of passion and prejudice,* but * who, solely occupied with their own salvation, pay no regard to that of other men.’ Then the Buddha is constantly spoken of as the Jin a or * vanquisher ;* his exit from existence—like that of the Jaina Tirthafikaras—is his Nirv&na; both employ the SwastikaorSatyaasa sacred symbol; the sacred language of the Buddhists is M a- g a d h 1,—of the Jainas ArddhaMagadhi ; the temples of both sects are Chaityas; those who have attained perfection are Arhans ; and Digambaras or naked ascetics were a Baud¬ dha, as well as a Jaina sect.f Further, the Jainas indicate South Bihar as the scene of the life and labours of nearly all their Tirthaftkaras, as it was of Sakya Sifiha. Buddha is often called Mahavira—the name of the last Tirthaii- kara, whose father the Jainas call S i d d h a r- th a the 1 establisher of faith’—the proper name of Buddha,—and both are of the race of Iksli- vaku ; and Mahavira’s wife was Y a s 6 d a, as Buddha’s was Y asodhara. Moreover Maha¬ vira’s is said to have died at P a w a, in Bihar, about 527 b.c., and Gautama Buddha, between Pa w & and Ku s i n a r a, in 543 b.c.J These coincidences, together with many analogies of doctrine and practice, seem to indicate that the Jainas are of Bauddha origin. Of the history of the origin of the Jainas we know little or nothing. Professor Wilson has the following remarks :— The Bauddhas uare said in one account to have come from Banftras in the third century of the Christian era, and to have settled about Kane hi, where they flourished for some centuries ; at last, in the eighth century, Akalanka, a Jain teacher from SravanaBelligola, and who had been partly educated in the Bauddha college at Ponataga disputed with them in the presence of the last Bauddha prince, Hemasitala, and having con¬ futed them, the prince became a Jain and the Bauddhas were banished to Kandy. . . We know that the Bauddha religion continued in Gujarat till a late period or the end of the twelfth century, when Kum&raP&laof Gujarat was converted by the celebrated Hemachandra to the Jain faith, but by the fourteenth century it seems to have dis¬ appeared from the more southern portion of the peninsula. t Conf. Hodgson's Illustrations of Buddhism, pp. 48, 213. t The Singhalese Buddhists specify twenty-four Buddhas, before Gautama, the same number as that of the Tirthan- karas or Jinas.—Conf. Mahanamo in his Tfka, in Tumours Mahatoanso, Introd. [8vo. pp. lxii.—lxv.J 4to. pp. xxxii.— xxxiv.; Hardy’s Buddhism, p. 94. Compare also the first six chapters of the Kalpa Sutra with Bigandet’s Legend of Gaudama,