Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 243

JAINISM
more, preaching the doctrine generally and instructing his eleven principal disciples-the so-called ganadharas, "keepers of the hosts (of the followers)." When he died at Pāvā, attaining thus the final release (nirvāņa), he was in the seventy-second year of his age. The date is placed by the Svetambara sect (as the beginning of their era) in 527 B.C., by the Digambaras in 509, and by the modern Western scholars (since Mahāvīra passed away only a few years before the Buddha) about 480.4o
A dialogue recorded in the sacred writings of the Śvetāmbara sect states that in essence the teachings of Parsva and Mahāvīra are the same. Keşi, an adherent of Pārśva, is shown asking questions of Sudharma-Gautama, one of the followers of the newer teacher, Mahāvīra; and to all his questions he receives what seem to him to be the wrong answers. He therefore presses his argument. "According to Parsvanatha the Great Vows are but four in number; why then," he demands, "did Vardhamāna speak of them as five?" To which Gautama replies: "Pārsvanatha understood the spirit of the time and realized that the enumeration of the Great Vows as four would suit the people of his age; Mahāvīra gave the same four vows as five in order to make the Jaina doctrine more acceptable to the people of his time. There is no essential difference in the teachings of the two Tirthankaras."
The fifth vow, which Kesi, the adherent of the teaching of Pārśva, was calling into question, was the one about the clothes, and is what led to the schism; for it involved a number of revisions of attitude and conduct. The conservatives not only insisted on remaining sky-clad, but also rejected all the other reforms of Mahāvīra. Women, for example, were permitted by
40 This biography is based upon, and follows closely, the account given by Jacobi, "Jainism," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VII, pp. 466-467.
41 Uttaradhyayana Sūtra 23 (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XLV, pp. 119ff). The authenticity of this text is denied by the Digambaras.
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