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Bible Encyclopedias
Jains
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or the most numerous and influential sect of heretics, or nonconformists to the Brahmanical system of Hinduism, in India. They are found in every province of upper Hindustan, in the cities along the Ganges and in Calcutta. But they are more numerous to the west - in Mewar, Gujarat, and in the upper part of the Malabar coast - and are also scattered throughout the whole of the southern peninsula. They are mostly traders, and live in the towns; and the wealth of many of their community gives them a social importance greater than would result from their mere numbers. In the Indian census of 1901 they are returned as being 1,334,140 in number. Their magnificent series of temples and shrines on Mount Abu, one of the seven wonders of India, is perhaps the most striking outward sign of their wealth and importance.
The Jains are the last direct representatives on the continent of India of those schools of thought which grew out of the active philosophical speculation and earnest spirit of religious inquiry that prevailed in the valley of the Ganges during the 5th and 6th centuries before the Christian era. For many centuries Jainism was so overshadowed by that stupendous movement, born at the same time and in the same place, which we call Buddhism, that it remained almost unnoticed by the side of its powerful rival. But when Buddhism, whose widely open doors had absorbed the mass of the community, became thereby corrupted from its pristine purity and gradually died away, the smaller school of the Jains, less diametrically opposed to the victorious orthodox creed of the Brahmans, survived, and in some degree took its place.
Jainism purports to be the system of belief promulgated by Vaddhamana, better known by his epithet of Maha-vira (the great hero), who was a contemporary of Gotama, the Buddha. But the Jains, like the Buddhists, believe that the same system had previously been proclaimed through countless ages by each one of a succession of earlier teachers. The Jains count twentyfour such prophets, whom they call Jinas, or Tirthankaras, that is, conquerors or leaders of schools of thought. It is from this word Jina that the modern name Jainas, meaning followers of the Jina, or of the Jinas, is derived. This legend of the twentyfour Jinas contains a germ of truth. Maha-vira was not an originator; he merely carried on, with but slight changes, a system which existed before his time, and which probably owes its most distinguishing features to a teacher named Parswa, who ranks in the succession of Jinas as the predecessor of Maha-vira. Parswa is said, in the Jain chronology, to have been born two hundred years before Maha-vira (that is, about 760 B.C.); but the only conclusion that it is safe to draw from this statement is that Parswa was considerably earlier in point of time than Mahavira. Very little reliance can be placed upon the details reported in the Jain books concerning the previous Jinas in the list of the twenty-four Tirthankaras. The curious will find in them many reminiscences of Hindu and Buddhist legend; and the antiquary must notice the distinctive symbols assigned to each, in order to recognize the statues of the different Jinas, otherwise identical, in the different Jain temples.
The Jains are divided into two great parties - the Digambaras, or Sky-clad Ones, and the Svetambaras, or the White-robed Ones. The latter have only as yet been traced, and that doubtfully, as far back as the 5th century after Christ; the former are almost certainly the same as the Niganthas, who are referred to in numerous passages of the Buddhist Pali Pitakas, and must therefore be at least as old as the 6th century B.C. In many of these passages the Niganthas are mentioned as contemporaneous with the Buddha; and details enough are given concerning their leader Nigantha Nata-putta (that is, the Nigantha of the Jnatrika clan) to enable us to identify him, without any doubt, as the same person as the Vaddhamana Maha-vira of the Jain books. This remarkable confirmation, from the scriptures of a rival religion, of the Jain tradition is conclusive as to the date of Maha-vira. The Niganthas are referred to in one of Asoka's edicts (Corpus Inscriptionum, Plate xx.). Unfortunately the account of the teachings of Nigantha Nata-putta given in the Buddhist scriptures are, like those of the Buddha's teachings given in the Brahmanical literature, very meagre.
Jain Literature
The Jain scriptures themselves, though based on earlier traditions, are not older in their present form than the 5th century of our era. The most distinctively sacred books are called the forty-five Agamas, consisting of eleven Angas, twelve Upangas, ten Pakinnakas, six Chedas, four Mina-sutras and two other books. Devaddhi Ganin, who occupies among the Jains a position very similar to that occupied among the Buddhists by Buddhaghosa, collected the then existing traditions and teachings of the sect into these forty-five Agamas. Like the Buddhist scriptures, the earlier Jain books are written in a dialect of their own, the so-called Jaina Prakrit; and it was not till between A.D. 1000 and Imo that the Jains adopted Sanskrit as their literary language. Considerable progress has been made in the publication and elucidation of these original authorities. But a great deal remains yet to be done. The oldest books now in the possession of the modern Jains purport to go back, not to the foundation of the existing order in the 6th century B.C., but only to the time of Bhadrabahu, three centuries later. The whole of the still older literature, on which the revision then made was based, the so-called Purvas, have been lost. And the existing canonical books, while preserving a great deal that was probably derived from them, contain much later material. The problem remains to sort out the older from the later, to distinguish between the earlier form of the faith and its subsequent developments, and to collect the numerous data for the general, social, industrial, religious and political history of India. Professor Weber gave a fairly full and carefully-drawn-up analysis of the whole of the more ancient books in the second part of the second volume of his Catalogue of the Sanskrit MSS. at Berlin, published in 1888, and in vols. xvi. and xvii. of his Indische Studien. An English translation of these last was published first in the Indian Antiquary, and then separately at Bombay, 1893. Professor Bhandarkar gave an account of the contents of many later works in his Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS., Bombay, 1883. Only a small beginning has been made in editing and translating these works. The best précis of a long book can necessarily only deal with the more important features in it. And in the choice of what should be included the précis-writer will often omit the points some subsequent investigator may most especially want. All the older works ought therefore to be edited and translated in full and properly indexed. The Jains themselves have now printed in Bombay a complete edition of their sacred books. But the critical value of this edition, and of other editions of separate texts printed elsewhere in India, leaves much to be desired. Professor Jacobi has edited and translated the Kalpa Sutra, containing a life of the founder of the Jain order; but this can scarcely be older than the 5th century of our era. He has also edited and translated the Ayaranya Sutta of the Svetambara Jains. The text, published by the Pali Text Society, is of 140 pages octavo. The first part of it, about 50 pages, is a very old document on the Jain views as to conduct, and the remainder consists of appendices, added at different times, on the same subject. The older part may go back as early as the 3rd century B.C., and it sets out more especially the Jain doctrine of tapas or self-mortification, in contradistinction to the Buddhist view, which condemned asceticism. The rules of conduct in this book are for members of the order. Dr Rudolf Hoernle edited and translated an ancient work on the rules of conduct for laymen, the Uvasaga Dasao. 1 - Professor Leumann edited another of the older works, the Aupapatika Stara, and a fourth, entitled the Dasa-vaikalika Satra, both of them published by the German Oriental Society. Professor Jacobi translated two more, the Uttaradhyayana and the Sutra Kritanga. 2 Finally Dr Barnett has translated two others in vol. xvii. of the Oriental Translation Fund (new series, London, 1907). Thus about one-fiftieth part of these interesting and valuable old records is now accessible to the European scholar. The sect of the Svetambaras has preserved the oldest literatures. Dr Hoernle has treated of the early history of 1 Published in the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1888.
2 These two, and the other two mentioned above, form vols. i. and ii. of his Jaina Sutras, published in the Sacred Books of the East (1884, 1895).
the sect in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1898. Several scholars - notably Bhagvanlal Indraji, Mr Lewis Rice and Hofrath Biihler - have treated of the remarkable archaeological discoveries lately made. These confirm the older records in many details, and show that the Jains, in the centuries before the Christian era, were a wealthy and important body in widely separated parts of India.
Jainism
The most distinguishing outward peculiarity of Maha-vira and of his earliest followers was their practice of going quite naked, whence the term Digambara. Against this custom, Gotama, the Buddha, especially warned his followers; and it is referred to in the well-known Greek phrase, Gymnosophist, used already by Megasthenes, which applies very aptly to the Niganthas. Even the earliest name Nigantha, which means "free from bonds," may not be without allusions to this curious belief in the sanctity of nakedness, though it also alluded to freedom from the bonds of sin and of transmigration. The statues of the Jinas in the Jain temples, some of which are of enormous size, are still always quite naked; but the Jains themselves have abandoned the practice, the Digambaras being sky-clad at meal-time only, and the Svetambaras being always completely clothed. And even among the Digambaras it is only the recluses or Yatis, men devoted to a religious life, who carry out this practice. The Jain laity - the Sravakas, or disciples - do not adopt it.
The Jain views of life were, in the most important and essential respects, the exact reverse of the Buddhist views. The two orders, Buddhist and Jain, were not only, and from the first, independent, but directly opposed the one to the other. In philosophy the Jains are the most thorough-going supporters of the old animistic position. Nearly everything, according to them, has a soul within its outward visible shape - not only men and animals, but also all plants, and even particles of earth, and of water (when it is cold), and fire and wind. The Buddhist theory, as is well known, is put together without the hypothesis of "soul" at all. The word the Jains use for soul is jiva, which means life; and there is much analogy between many of the expressions they use and the view that the ultimate cells and atoms are all, in a more or less modified sense, alive. They regard good and evil and space as ultimate substances which come into direct contact with the minute souls in everything. And their best-known position in regard to the points most discussed in philosophy is Syad-vada, the doctrine that you may say "Yes" and at the same time "No" to everything. You can affirm the eternity of the world, for instance, from one point of view, and at the same time deny it from another; or, at different times and in different connexions, you may one day affirm it and another day deny it. This position both leads to vagueness of thought and explains why Jainism has had so little influence over other schools of philosophy in India. On the other hand, the Jains are as determined in their views of asceticism (tapas) as they were compromising in their views of philosophy. Any injury done to the "souls" being one of the worst of iniquities, the good monk should not wash his clothes (indeed, the most austere will reject clothes altogether), nor even wash his teeth, for fear of injuring living things. "Subdue the body, chastise thyself, weaken thyself, just as fire consumes dry wood." It was by suppressing, through such self-torture, the influence on his soul of all sensations that the Jain could obtain salvation. It is related of the founder himself, the Maha-vira, that after twelve years' penance he thus obtained Nirvana (Jacobi, Jaina Sutras, i. 201) before he entered upon his career as a teacher. And through the rest of his life, till he died at Pava, shortly before the Buddha, he followed the same habit of continual self-mortification. The Buddha, on the other hand, obtained Nirvana in his 35th year, under the Bo tree, after he had abandoned penance; and through the rest of his life he spoke of penance as quite useless from his point of view.
There is no manual of Jainism as yet published, but there is a 1 The Hatthi Gumpha and three other inscriptions at Cuttack (Leyden, 1885); Sravana Belgola inscriptions (Bangalore, 1889); Vienna Oriental Journal, vols. ii. - v.; Epigraphia Indica, vols. i - vii.
great deal of information on various points in the introductions to the works referred to above. Professor Jacobi, who is the best authority on the history of this sect, thus sums up the distinction between the Maha-vira and the Buddha: "Maha-vira was rather of the ordinary class of religious men in India. He may be allowed a talent for religious matters, but he possessed not the genius which Buddha undoubtedly had.. .. The Buddha's philosophy forms a system based on a few fundamental ideas, whilst that of Maha-vira scarcely forms a system, but is merely a sum of opinions (pannattis) on various subjects, no fundamental ideas being there to uphold the mass of metaphysical matter. Besides this.. .it is the ethical element that gives to the Buddhist writings their superiority over those of the Jains. Maha-vira treated ethics as corollary and subordinate to his metaphysics, with which he was chiefly concerned." Additional Authorities. - Bhadrabahu's Kalpa Siitra, the recognized and popular manual of the Svetambara Jains, edited with English introduction by Professor Jacobi (Leipzig, 1879); Hemacandra's "Yoga S'astram," edited by Windisch, in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morg. Ges. for 1874; "Zwei Jaina Stotra," edited in the Indische Studien, vol. xv.; Ein Fragment der Bhagavati, by Professor Weber; Memoires de l'Academie de Berlin (1866); Nirayavaliya Sutta, edited by Dr Warren, with Dutch introduction (Amsterdam, 1879); Over de godsdienstige en wijsgeerige Begrippen der Jainas, by Dr Warren (his doctor-dissertation, Zwolle, 1875); Beitrage zur Grammatik des Jaina-prakrit, by Dr Edward Muller (Berlin, 1876); Colebrooke's Essays, vol. ii. Mr J. Burgess has an exhaustive account of the Jain Cave Temples (none older than the 7th century) in Fergusson and Burgess's Cave Temples in India (London, 1880).
See also Hopkins' Religions of India (London, 1896), pp. 280-96, and J. G. Biihler On the Indian Sect of the Jainas, edited by J. Burgess (London, 1904). (T. W. R. D.)
These files are public domain.
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Jains'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/j/jains.html. 1910.
