On the Indian Sect of the Jainas

by Georg Bühler

This agrees with several remarks in the Buddhist chronicles, which assert the existence of the Jainas in different districts of India during the first century after Buddha's death. In the memoirs of the Chinese Buddhist and pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang, who visited India in the beginning of the seventh century of our era, is to be found an extract from the ancient annals of Magadha, which proves the existence of the Nirgrantha or Jainas in their original home from a very early time. [[36]] This extract relates to the building of the great monastry at Nâlandâ, the high school of Buddhism in eastern India, which was founded shortly after Buddha's Nirvâṇa, and mentions incidentally that a Nirgrantha who was a great astrologer and prophet had prophesied the future success of the new building. At almost as early a period the Mahâvan[g]sa, composed in the fifth century A.D., fixes the appearance of the Nirgrantha in the island of Ceylon. It is said that the king Paṇḍukâbhaya, who ruled in the beginning of the second century after Buddha, from 367-307 B.C. built a temple and a monastery for two Nirgranthas. The monastery is again mentioned in the same work in the account of the reign of a later king Vaṭṭâgâmini, cir. 38-10 B.C. It is related that Vaṭṭâgâmini being offended by the inhabitants, caused it to be destroyed after it had existed during the reigns of twenty one kings, and erected a Buddhist Saṅghârâma in its place. The latter piece of information is found also in the Dîpavan[g]sa of more than a century earlier. [[37]]

None of these works can indeed be looked upon as a truly historical source. There are, even in those paragraphs which treat of the oldest history after Buddha's death, proofs enough that they simply hand down a faulty historical tradition. In spite of this, their statements on the Nirgrantha, cannot be denied a certain weight, because they are closely connected on the one side with the Buddhist canon, and on the other they agree with the indisputable sources of history, which relate to a slightly later period.

The first authentic information on Vardhamâna's sect is given by our oldest inscriptions, the religious edicts of the Maurya king Aśoka, who, according to tradition was anointed in the year 219 after Buddha's death, and--as the reference to his Grecian contemporaries, Antiochos, Magas, Alexander, Ptolemaeus and Antigonas confirms,--ruled, during the second half of the third century B.C. over the whole of India with the exception of the Dekhan. This prince interested himself not only in Buddhism, which he professed in his later years, but he took care, in a fatherly way, as he repeatedly relates, of all other religious sects in his vast kingdom. In the fourteenth year of his reign, he appointed officials, called law-superintendents, whose duty it was to watch over the life of the different communities, to settle their quarrels, to control the distribution of their legacies and pious gifts. He says of them in the second part of the seventh 'pillar' edict, which he issued in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, "My superintendents are occupied with various charitable matters, they are also engaged with all sects of ascetics and householders; I have so arranged that they will also be occupied with the affairs of the Saṁgha; likewise I have arranged that they will be occupied with the Âjîvika Brâhmaṇs; I have arranged it that they will also be occupied with the Nigaṇṭha". [[38]] The word Saṁgha serves here as usual for the Buddhist monks. The Âjívikas, whose name completely disappears later, are often named in the sacred writings of the Buddhists and the Jainas as an influential sect. They enjoyed the special favour of Aśoka, who, as other inscriptions testify, caused several caves at Baràbar to be made into dwellings for their ascetics. [[39]] As in the still older writings of the Buddhist canon, the name Nigaṇṭha here can refer only to the followers of Vardhamâna. As they are here, along with the other two favourites, counted worthy of special mention, we may certainly conclude that they were of no small importance at the time. Had they been without influence and of small numbers Aśoka would hardly have known of them, or at least would not have singled them out from the other numerous nameless sects of which he often speaks. It may also be supposed that they were specially numerous in their old home, as Aśoka's capital Pâṭaliputra lay in this land. Whether they spread far over these boundaries, cannot be ascertained.

On the other hand we possess two documents from the middle of the next century which prove that they advanced into south-eastern India as far as Kaliṅga. These are the inscriptions at Khaṇḍagiri in Orissa, of the great King Khâravela and his first wife, who governed the east coast of India from the year 152 to 165 of the Maurya era that is, in the first half of second century B.C.

The larger inscription, unfortunately very much disfigured, contains an account of the life of Khâravela from his childhood till the thirteenth year of his reign. It begins with an appeal to the Arhat and Siddha, which corresponds to the beginning of the five-fold form of homage still used among the Jainas, and mentions the building of temples in honour of the Arhat as well as an image of the first Jina, which was taken away by a hostile king. The second and smaller inscription asserts that Khâravela's wife caused a cave to be prepared for the ascetics of Kalinga, "who believed on the Arhat." [[40]]

From a somewhat later period, as the characters show, from the first century B.C. comes a dedicatory inscription which has been found far to the west of the original home of the Jainas, in Mathurà on the Jamnâ. It tells of the erection of a small temple in honour of the Arhat Vardhamâna, also of the dedication of seats for the teachers, a cistern, and a stone table. The little temple, it says, stood beside the temple of the guild of tradesmen, and this remark proves, that Mathurâ, which, according to the tradition of the Jainas, was one of the chief scats of their religion, possessed a community of Jainas even before the time of this inscription. [[41]]

A large member of dedicatory inscriptions have come to light, which are dated from the year 5 to 98 of the era of the Indo-Skythian kings, Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vâsudeva (Bazodeo) and therefore belong at latest to the end of the first and to the second century A.D. They are all on the pedestals of statues, which are recognisable partly by the special mention of the names of Vardhamâna and the Arhat Mahâvíra, partly by absolute nudity and other marks. They show, that the Jaina community continued to flourish in Mathurâ and give besides extraordinarily important information, as I found in a renewed research into the ancient history of the sect. In a number of them, the dedicators of the statues give not only their own names, but also those of the religious teachers to whose communities they belonged. Further, they give these teachers their official titles, still used among the Jainas: vâchaka, 'teacher', and gaṇin, 'head of a school'. Lastly they specify the names of the schools to which the teachers belonged, and those of their subdivisions. The schools are called, gaṇa, 'companies'; the subdivisions, kula, 'families' and śâkhà, 'branches'. Exactly the same division into gaṇa, śâkhà, and kula is found in a list in one of the canonical works, of the Śvetâmbaras, the Kalpasûtra, which gives the number of the patriarchs and of the schools founded by them, and it is of the highest importance, that, in spite of mutilation and faulty reproduction of the inscriptions, nine of the names, which appear in the Kalpasûtra are recognisable in them, of which part agree exactly, part, through the fault of the stone-mason or wrong reading by the copyist, are somewhat defaced. According to the Kalpasûtra, Sushita, the ninth successor to Vardhamâna In the position of patriarch, together with his companion Supratibuddha, founded the 'Koḍiya' or 'Kautika gaṇa, which split up into four 'sâkhà, and four 'kula'. Inscription No. 4. which is dated in the year 9 of the king Kanishka or 87. A.D. (?) gives us a somewhat ancient form of the name of the gaṇa Koṭiya and that of one of its branches exactly corresponding to the Vairi śàkhâ. Mutilated or wrongly written, the first word occurs also in inscriptions Nos. 2, 6 and 9 as koto-, keṭṭiya, and ka ..., the second in No. 6 as Vorâ. One of the families of this gaṇa, the Vâṇiya kula is mentioned in No. 6, and perhaps in No. 4. The name of a second, the Praśnavàhaṇaka, seems to have appeared in No. 19. The last inscription mentions also another branch of the Koṭiya gaṇa, the Majhimâ sâkhâ, which, according to the Kalpasûtra, was founded by Priyagantha the second disciple of Susthita. Two still older schools which, according to tradition, sprang from the fourth disciple of the eighth patriarch, along with some of their divisions appear in inscriptions Nos. 20 and 10. These are the Aryya-Udehikîya gaṇa, called the school of the Ârya-Rohaṇa in the Kalpasûtra, to which belonged the Parihâsaka kula and the Pûrnapâtrikâ śâkhâ, as also the Charâṇa gaṇa with the Prîtidharmika kula. Each of these names is, however, somewhat mutilated by one or more errata in writing. [[42]] The statements in the inscriptions about the teachers and their schools are of no small importance in themselves for the history of the Jainas. If, at the end of the first century A.D.(?) many separate schools of Jaina ascetics existed, a great age and lively activity, as well as great care as regards the traditions of the sect, may be inferred. The agreement of the inscriptions with the Kalpasûtra leads still further however: it proves on the one side that the Jainas of Mathurâ were Śvetâmbara, and that the schism, which split the sect into two rival branches occurred long before the beginning of our era. On the other hand it proves that the tradition of the Svetâmbara really contains ancient historic elements, and by no means deserves to be looked upon with distrust. It is quite probable that, like all traditions, it is not altogether free from error. But it can no longer be declared to be the result of a later intentional misrepresentation, made in order to conceal the dependence of Jainism on Buddhism. It is no longer possible to dispute its authenticity with regard to those points which are confirmed by independent statements of other sects, and to assert, for example, that the Jaina account of the life of Vardhamâna, which agrees with the statements of the Buddists, proves nothing as regards the age of Jainism because in the late fixing of the canon of the Śvetâmbaras in the sixth century after Christ it may have been drawn from Buddhist works. Such an assertion which, under all circumstances, is a bold one, becomes entirely untenable when it is found that the tradition in question states correctly facts which lie not quite three centuries distant from Vardhamâna's time, and that the sect, long before the first century of our era kept strict account of their internal affairs. [[43]]

Unfortunately the testimony to the ancient history of the Jainas, so far as made known by means of inscriptions, terminates here. Interesting as it would be to follow the traces of their communities in the later inscriptions, which become so numerous from the fifth century A.D. onwards and in the description of his travels by Hiuen Tsiang, who found them spread through the whole of India and even beyond its boundaries, it would be apart from our purpose. The documents quoted suffice, however, to confirm the assertion that during the first five centuries after Buddha's death both the statements of Buddhist tradition and real historical sources give evidence to the existence of the Jainas as an important religious community independent of Buddhism, and that there are among the historical sources some which entirely clear away the suspicion that the tradition of the Jainas themselves is intentionally falsified.

The advantage gained for Indian history from the conclusion that Jainism and Buddhism are two contemporary sects--having arisen in the same district,--is no small one. First, this conclusion shows that the religious movement of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. in eastern India must have been a profound one. If not only one, but certainly two, and perhaps more reformers, appeared at the same time, preaching teachers, who opposed the existing circumstances in the same manner, and each of whom gained no small number of followers for their doctrines, the desire to overthrow the Brahmanical order of things must have been generally and deeply felt. This conclusion shows then that the transformation of the religious life in India was not merely the work of a religious community. Many strove to attain this object although separated from one another. It is now recognisable, though preliminarily, in one point only, that the religious history of India from the fifth century B.C. to the eighth or ninth A.D. was not made up of the fight between Brahmanism and Buddhism alone. This conclusion allows us, lastly, to hope that the thorough investigation of the oldest writings of the Jainas and their relations with Buddhism on the one hand and with Brahmanism on the other will afford many important ways of access to a more exact knowledge concerning the religious ideas which prevailed in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., and to the establishment of the boundaries of originality between the different systems.