Yajnavalkya appears in the B?ihad-ara?yaka as the respected friend but apparently not the chaplain of King Janaka. This monarch celebrated a great sacrifice and offered a thousand cows with a present of money to him who should prove himself wisest. Yajnavalkya rather arrogantly bade his pupil drive off the beasts. But his claim was challenged: seven Brahmans and one woman, Gargi Vacaknavi, disputed with him at length but had to admit his superiority. A point of special interest is raised by the question what happens after death. Yajnavalkya said to his questioner, ""Take my hand, my friend. We two alone shall know of this.
Let this question of ours not be discussed in public." Then these two went out and argued, and what they said was Karma and what they praised was Karma[223]." The doctrine that a man"s deeds cause his future existence and determine its character was apparently not popular among the priesthood who claimed that by their rites they could manufacture heavenly bodies for their clients.
2
This imperfect and sketchy picture of religious life in India so far as it can be gathered from the older Brahmanic books has reference mainly to the kingdoms of the Kuru-Pancalas and Videha in 800-600 B.C. Another picture, somewhat fuller, is found in the ancient literature of the Buddhists and Jains, which depicts the kingdoms of Magadha (Bihar) and Kosala (Oudh) in the time of the Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, that is, about 500 B.C. or rather earlier. It is probable that the picture is substantially true for this period or even for a period considerably earlier, for Mahavira was supposed to have revived with modifications the doctrines of Parsvanatha and some of the Buddhas mentioned as preceding Gotama were probably historical personages. But the Brahmanic and Buddhist accounts do not give two successive phases of thought in the same people, for the locality is not quite the same. Both pictures include the territory of Kasi and Videha, but the Brahmanic landscape lies mainly to the west and the Buddhist mainly to the east of this region. In the Buddhist sphere it is clear that in the youth of Gotama Brahmanic doctrines and ritual were well known but not predominant. It is hardly demonstrable from literature, but still probable, that the ideas and usages which found expression in Jainism and Buddhism existed in the western districts, though less powerful there than in the east[224].
A striking feature of the world in which Jainism and Buddhism arose was the prevalence of confraternities or religious orders. They were the recognized form of expression not only for piety but for the germs of theology, metaphysics and science. The ordinary man of the world kept on good terms with such G.o.ds as came his way, but those who craved for some higher interest often separated themselves from the body of citizens and followed some special rule of life. In one sense the Brahmans were the greatest of such communities, but they were a hereditary corporation and though they were not averse to new ideas, their special stock in trade was an acquaintance with traditional formulae and rites. They were also, in the main, sedentary and householders. Somewhat opposed to them were other companies, described collectively as Paribbajakas or Samanas[225].
These, though offering many differences among themselves, were clearly distinguished from the Brahmans, and it is probable that they usually belonged to the warrior caste. But they did not maintain that religious knowledge was the exclusive privilege of any caste: they were not householders but wanderers and celibates. Often they were ascetics and addicted to extreme forms of self-mortification. They did not study the Vedas or perform sacrifices, and their speculations were often revolutionary, and as a rule not theistic. It is not easy to find any English word which describes these people or the Buddhist Bhikkhus. Monk is perhaps the best, though inadequate. Pilgrim and friar give the idea of wandering, but otherwise suggest wrong a.s.sociations. But in calling them monks, we must remember that though celibates, and to some extent recluses (for they mixed with the world only in a limited degree), they were not confined in cloisters. The more stationary lived in woods, either in huts or the open air, but many spent the greater part of the year in wandering.
The practice of adopting a wandering religious life was frequent among the upper cla.s.ses, and must have been a characteristic feature of society. No blame attached to the man who abruptly left his family, though well-to-do people are represented as dissuading their children from the step. The interest in philosophical and theological questions was perhaps even greater than among the Brahmans, and they were recognized not as parerga to a life of business or amus.e.m.e.nt, but as occupations in themselves. Material civilization had not kept pace with the growth of thought and speculation. Thus restless and inquisitive minds found little to satisfy them in villages or small towns, and the wanderer, instead of being a useless rolling stone, was likely not only to have a more interesting life but to meet with sympathy and respect.
Ideas and discussion were plentiful but there were no books and hardly any centres of learning. Yet there was even more movement than among the travelling priests of the Kurus and Pancalas, a coming and going, a trafficking in ideas. Knowledge was to be picked up in the market-places and highways. Up and down the main roads circulated crowds of highly intelligent men. They lived upon alms, that is to say, they were fed by the citizens who favoured their opinions or by those good souls who gave indiscriminately to all holy men-and in the larger places rest houses were erected for their comfort. It was natural that the more commanding and original spirits should collect others round them and form bands, for though there was public discussion, writing was not used for religious purposes and he who would study any doctrine had to become the pupil of a master. The doctrine too involved a discipline, or mode of life best led in common. Hence these bands easily grew into communities which we may call orders or sects, if we recognize that their const.i.tution was more fluid and less formal than is implied by those words. It is not easy to say how much organization such communities possessed before the time of the Buddha. His Sangha was the most successful of them all and doubtless surpa.s.sed the others in this as in other respects. Yet it was modelled on existing inst.i.tutions and the Vinaya Pitaka[226] itself represents him as prescribing the observance of times and seasons, not so much because he thought it necessary as because the laity suggested that he would do well to follow the practice of the t.i.tthiya schools. By this phrase we are to understand the adherents of Makkhali Gosala, Sanjaya Bela??hiputta and others. We know less about these sects than we could wish, but two lists of schools or theories are preserved, one in the Brahmajala Sutta[227] where the Buddha himself criticises 62 erroneous views and another in Jain literature[228], which enumerates no fewer than 363.
Both catalogues are somewhat artificial, and it is clear that many views are mentioned not because they represent the tenets of real schools but from a desire to condemn all possible errors. But the list of topics discussed is interesting. From the Brahmajala Sutta we learn that the problems which agitated ancient Magadha were such as the following:--is the world eternal or not: is it infinite or finite: is there a cause for the origin of things or is it without cause: does the soul exist after death: if so, is its existence conscious or unconscious: is it eternal or does it cease to exist, not necessarily at the end of its present life but after a certain number of lives: can it enjoy perfect bliss here or elsewhere? Theories on these and other points are commonly called vada or talk, and those who hold them vadins. Thus there is the Kala-vada[229] which makes Time the origin and principle of the universe, and the Svabhava-vada which teaches that things come into being of their own accord. This seems crude when stated with archaic frankness but becomes plausible if paraphrased in modern language as "discontinuous variation and the spontaneous origin of definite species." There were also the Niyati-vadins, or fatalists, who believed that all that happens is the result of Niyati or fixed order, and the Yadriccha-vadins who, on the contrary, ascribed everything to chance and apparently denied causation, because the same result follows from different antecedents. It is noticeable that none of these views imply theism or pantheism but the Buddha directed so persistent a polemic against the doctrine of the atman that it must have been known in Magadha. The fundamental principles of the Sankhya were also known, though perhaps not by that name. It is probably correct to say not that the Buddha borrowed from the Sankhya but that both he and the Sankhya accepted and elaborated in different ways certain current views.
The Pali Suttas[230] mention six agnostic or materialist teachers and give a brief but perhaps not very just compendium of their doctrines.
One of them was the founder of the Jains who, as a sect that has lasted to the present day with a considerable record in art and literature, merit a separate chapter. Of the remaining five, one, Sanjaya of the Bela??ha clan, was an agnostic, similar to the people described elsewhere[231] as eel-wrigglers, who in answer to such questions as, is there a result of good and bad actions, decline to say either _(a)_ there is, _(b)_ there is not, _(c)_ there both is and is not, _(d)_ there neither is nor is not. This form of argument has been adopted by Buddhism for some important questions but Sanjaya and his disciples appear to have applied it indiscriminately and to have concluded that positive a.s.sertion is impossible.
The other four were in many respects what we should call fatalists and materialists[232], or in the language of their time Akriya-vadins, denying, that is, free will, responsibility and the merit or demerit of good or bad actions. They nevertheless believed in metempsychosis and practised asceticism. Apparently they held that beings are born again and again according to a natural law, but not according to their deeds: and that though asceticism cannot accelerate the soul"s journey, yet at a certain stage it is a fore-ordained and indispensable preliminary to emanc.i.p.ation. The doctrines attributed to all four are crude and startling. Perhaps they are exaggerated by the Buddhist narrator, but they also reflect the irreverent exuberance of young thought. Pura?a Ka.s.sapa denies that there is any merit in virtue or harm in murder.
Another ascetic called Ajita of the garment of hair teaches that nothing exists but the four elements, and that "fools and wise alike are annihilated on the dissolution of the body and after death they are not." Then why, one asks, was he an ascetic? Similarly Pakudha Kaccayana states that "when a sharp sword cleaves a head in twain" the soul and pain play a part similar to that played by the component elements of the sword and head. The most important of these teachers was Makkhali Gosala. His doctrine comprises a denial of causation and free will and an a.s.sertion that fools and wise alike will make an end of pain after wandering through eighty-four hundred thousand births. The followers of this teacher were called ajivikas: they were a distinct body in the time of Asoka, and the name[233] occurs as late as the thirteenth century in South Indian inscriptions. Several accounts[234] of the founder are extant, but all were compiled by bitter opponents, for he was hated by Jains and Buddhists alike. His doctrine was closely allied to Jainism, especially the Digambara sect, but was probably more extravagant and anti-social. He appears to have objected to confraternities[235], to have enjoined a solitary life, absolute nudity and extreme forms of self-mortification, such as eating filth. The Jains accused his followers of immorality and perhaps they were ancient prototypes of the lower cla.s.s of religious mendicants who have brought discredit on Hinduism.
3
None of the phases of religious life described above can be called popular. The religion of the Brahmans was the thought and science of a cla.s.s. The various un-Brahmanic confraternities usually required their members to be wandering ascetics. They had little to say to village householders who must have const.i.tuted the great majority of the population. Also there are signs that priests and n.o.bles, however much they quarrelled, combined to keep the lower castes in subjection[236].
Yet we can hardly doubt that then as now all cla.s.ses were profoundly religious, and that just as to-day village deities unknown to the Vedas, or even to the Puranas, receive the worship of millions, so then there were G.o.ds and rites that did not lack popular attention though unnoticed in the scriptures of Brahmans and Buddhists.
We know little of this popular religion by direct description before or even during the Buddhist period, but we have fragmentary indications of its character. Firstly several incongruous observances have obtruded themselves into the Brahmanic ritual. Thus in the course of the Mahavrata ceremony[237] the Hotri priest sits in a swing and maidens, carrying pitchers of water on their heads and singing, dance round an altar while drums are beaten. Parallels to this may be found to-day. The image of Krishna, or even a priest who represents Krishna, is swung to and fro in many temples, the use of drums in worship is distressingly common, and during the Pongol festivities in southern India young people dance round or leap over a fire. Other remarkable features in the Mahavrata are the shooting of arrows into a target of skin, the use of obscene language (such as is still used at the Holi festival) and even obscene acts[238]. We must not a.s.sume that popular religion in ancient India was specially indecent, but it probably included ceremonies a.n.a.logous to the Lupercalia and Thesmophoria, in which licence in words and deeds was supposed to promote fertility and prosperity.
We are also justified in supposing that offerings to ancestors and many ceremonies mentioned in the G?ihya-sutras or handbooks of domestic ritual were performed by far larger cla.s.ses of the population than the greater sacrifices, but we have no safe criteria for distinguishing between priestly injunctions and the real practice of ancient times.
Secondly, in the spells and charms of the Atharva[239], which received the Brahmanic imprimatur later than the other three Vedas, we find an outlook differing from that of the other Vedas and resembling the popular religion of China. Mankind are persecuted by a host of evil spirits and protect themselves by charms addressed directly to their tormentors or by invoking the aid of beneficent powers. All nature is animated by good and evil spirits, to be dealt with like other natural advantages or difficulties, but not thought of as moral or spiritual guides. It is true that the Atharva often rises above this phase, for it consists not of simple folk-lore, but of folk-lore modified under-sacerdotal influence. The protecting powers invoked are often the G.o.ds of the Rig Veda[240], but prayers and incantations are also addressed directly to diseases[241] and demons[242] or, on the other hand, to healing plants and amulets[243]. We can hardly be wrong in supposing that in such invocations the Atharva reflects the popular practice of its time, but it prefers the invocation of counteracting forces, whether Vedic deities or magical plants, to the propitiation of malignant spirits, such as the worship of the G.o.ddesses presiding over smallpox and cholera which is still prevalent in India. In this there is probably a contrast between the ideas of the Aryan and non-Aryan races.
The latter propitiate the demon or disease; the Aryans invoke a beneficent and healing power. But though on the whole the Atharva is inclined to banish the black spectres of popular demonology with the help of luminous Aryan G.o.ds, still we find invoked in it and in its subsidiary literature a mult.i.tude of spirits, good and bad, known by little except their names which, however, often suffice to indicate their functions. Such are asapati (Lord of the region), Kshetrapati (Lord of the field), both invoked in ceremonies for destroying locusts and other noxious insects, Sakambhara and Apva, deities of diarrhoea, and Arati, the G.o.ddess of avarice and grudge. In one hymn[244] the poet invokes, together with many Vedic deities, all manner of nature spirits, demons, animals, healing plants, seasons and ghosts. A similar collection of queer and vague personalities is found in the popular pantheon of China to-day[245].
Thirdly, various deities who are evidently considered to be well known, play some part in the Pali Pitakas. Those most frequently mentioned are Mahabrahma or Brahma Sahampati, and Sakka or Indra, but not quite the same as the Vedic Indra and less in need of libations of Soma. In two curious suttas[246] deputations of deities, clearly intended to include all the important G.o.ds worshipped at the time, are represented as visiting the Buddha. In both lists a prominent position is given to the Four Great Kings, or Ruling Spirits of the Four Quarters, accompanied by retinues called Gandhabbas, k.u.mbhandas, Nagas, and Yakkhas respectively, and similar to the Nats of Burma. The Gandhabbas (or Gandharvas) are heavenly musicians and mostly benevolent, but are mentioned in the Brahma?as as taking possession of women who then deliver oracles. The Nagas are serpents, sometimes represented as cobras with one or more heads and sometimes as half human: sometimes they live in palaces under the water or in the depths of the earth and sometimes they are the tutelary deities of trees. Serpent worship has undoubtedly been prevalent in India in all ages: indications of it are found in the earliest Buddhist sculptures and it still survives[247]. The Yakkhas (or Yakshas) though hardly demons (as their name is often rendered) are mostly ill disposed to the human race, sometimes man-eaters and often of unedifying conduct. The Mahasamaya-sutta also mentions mountain spirits from the Himalaya, Satagiri, and Mount Vepulla. Of the Devas or chiefs of the Yakkhas in this catalogue only a few are known to Brahmanic works, such as Soma, Varu?a, Ve?hu (Vishnu), the Yamas, Paj.a.pati, Inda (Indra), Sanan-k.u.mara. All these deities are enumerated together with little regard to the positions they occupy in the sacerdotal pantheon.
The enquirer finds a similar difficulty when he tries in the twentieth century to identify rural deities, or even the tutelaries of many great temples, with any personages recognized by the canonical literature.
In several discourses attributed to the Buddha[248] is incorporated a tract called the Sila-vagga, giving a list of practices of which he disapproved, such as divination and the use of spells and drugs. Among special observances censured, the following are of interest. (_a_) Burnt offerings, and offerings of blood drawn from the right knee. (_b_) The worship of the Sun, of Siri, the G.o.ddess of Luck, and of the Great One, meaning perhaps the Earth. (_c_) Oracles obtained from a mirror, or from a girl possessed by a spirit or from a G.o.d.
We also find allusions in Buddhist and Jain works as well as in the inscriptions of Asoka to popular festivals or fairs called Samajjas[249]
which were held on the tops of hills and seem to have included music, recitations, dancing and perhaps dramatic performances. These meetings were probably like the modern _mela_, half religion and half entertainment, and it was in such surroundings that the legends and mythology which the great Epics show in full bloom first grew and budded.
Thus we have evidence of the existence in pre-Buddhist India of rites and beliefs-the latter chiefly of the kind called animistic-disowned for the most part by the Buddhists and only tolerated by the Brahmans. No elaborate explanation of this popular religion or of its relation to more intellectual and sacerdotal cults is necessary, for the same thing exists at the present day and the best commentary on the Sila-vagga is Crooke"s _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_.
In themselves such popular superst.i.tions may seem despicable and repulsive (as the Buddha found them), but when they are numerous and vigorous, as in India, they have a real importance for they provide a matrix and nursery in which the beginnings of great religions may be reared. Saktism and the worship of Rama and Krishna, together with many less conspicuous cults, all entered Brahmanism in this way. Whenever a popular cult grew important or whenever Brahmanic influence spread to a new district possessing such a cult, the popular cult was recognized and brahmanized. This policy can be abundantly ill.u.s.trated for the last four or five centuries (for instance in a.s.sam), and it was in operation two and a half millenniums ago or earlier. It explains the low and magical character of the residue of popular religion, every ceremony and deity of importance being put under Brahmanic patronage, and it also explains the sudden appearance of new deities. We can safely a.s.sert that in the time of the Buddha, and _a fortiori_ in the time of the older Upanishads[250] and Brahma?as, Krishna and Rama were not prominent as deities in Hindustan, but it may well be that they had a considerable position as heroes whose exploits were recited at popular festivals and that Krishna was growing into a G.o.d in other regions which have left no literature.
CHAPTER VII
THE JAINS[251]
1
Before leaving pre-Buddhist India, it may be well to say something of the Jains. Many of their doctrines, especially their disregard not only of priests but of G.o.ds, which seems to us so strange in any system which can be called a religion, are closely a.n.a.logous to Buddhism and from one point of view Jainism is part of the Buddhist movement. But more accurately it may be called an early specialized form of the general movement which culminated in Buddhism. Its founder, Mahavira, was an earlier contemporary of the Buddha and not a pupil or imitator[252].
Even had its independent appearance been later, we might still say that it represents an earlier stage of thought. Its kinship to the theories mentioned in the last chapter is clear. It does not indeed deny responsibility and free will, but its advocacy of extreme asceticism and death by starvation has a touch of the same extravagance and its list of elements in which physical substances and ideas are mixed together is curiously crude.
Jainism is atheistic, and this atheism is as a rule neither apologetic nor polemical but is accepted as a natural religious att.i.tude. By atheism, of course, a denial of the existence of Devas is not meant; the Jains surpa.s.s, if possible, the exuberant fancy of the Brahmans and Buddhists in designing imaginary worlds and peopling them with angelic or diabolical inhabitants, but, as in Buddhism, these beings are like mankind subject to transmigration and decay and are not the masters, still less the creators, of the universe. There were two princ.i.p.al world theories in ancient India. One, which was systematized as the Vedanta, teaches in its extreme form that the soul and the universal spirit are identical and the external world an illusion. The other, systematized as the Sankhya, is dualistic and teaches that primordial matter and separate individual souls are both of them uncreated and indestructible.
Both lines of thought look for salvation in the liberation of the soul to be attained by the suppression of the pa.s.sions and the acquisition of true knowledge.
Jainism belongs to the second of these cla.s.ses. It teaches that the world is eternal, self-existent and composed of six const.i.tuent substances: souls, dharma, adharma, s.p.a.ce, time, and particles of matter[253]. Dharma and adharma are defined by modern Jains as subtle substances a.n.a.logous to s.p.a.ce which make it possible for things to move or rest, but Jacobi is probably right in supposing that in primitive speculation the words had their natural meaning and denoted subtle fluids which cause merit and demerit. In any case the enumeration places in singular juxtaposition substances and activities, the material and the immaterial. The process of salvation and liberation is not distinguished from physical processes and we see how other sects may have drawn the conclusion, which apparently the Jains did not draw, that human action is necessitated and that there is no such thing as free will. For Jainism individual souls are free, separate existences, whose essence is pure intelligence. But they have a tendency towards action and pa.s.sion and are misled by false beliefs. For this reason, in the existence which we know they are chained to bodies and are found not only in Devas and in human beings but in animals, plants and inanimate matter. The habitation of the soul depends on the merit or demerit which it acquires and merit and demerit have respectively greater or less influence during immensely long periods called Utsarpini and Avasarpini, ascending and descending, in which human stature and the duration of life increase or decrease by a regular law. Merit secures birth among the G.o.ds or good men. Sin sends the soul to baser births, even in inanimate substances. On this downward path, the intelligence is gradually dimmed till at last motion and consciousness are lost, which is not however regarded as equivalent to annihilation.
Another dogmatic exposition of the Jain creed is based on seven principles, called soul, non-soul, influx, imprisonment, exclusion, dissipation, release[254]. Karma, which in the ordinary language of Indian philosophy means deeds and their effect on the soul, is here regarded as a peculiarly subtle form of matter[255] which enters the soul and by this influx (or asrava, a term well-known in Buddhism) defiles and weighs it down. As food is transformed into flesh, so the Karma forms a subtle body which invests the soul and prevents it from being wholly isolated from matter at death. The upward path and liberation of the soul are effected by stopping the entrance of Karma, that is by not performing actions which give occasion to the influx, and by expelling it. The most effective means to this end is self-mortification, which not only prevents the entrance of new Karma but annihilates what has acc.u.mulated.
Like most Indian sects, Jainism considers the world of transmigration as a bondage or journey which the wise long to terminate. But joyless as is its immediate outlook, its ultimate ideas are not pessimistic. Even in the body the soul can attain a beatific state of perfect knowledge[256]
and above the highest heaven (where the greatest G.o.ds live in bliss for immense periods though ultimately subject to transmigration) is the paradise of blessed souls, freed from transmigration. They have no visible form but consist of life throughout, and enjoy happiness beyond compare. With a materialism characteristic of Jain theology, the treatise from which this account is taken[257] adds that the dimensions of a perfected soul are two-thirds of the height possessed in its last existence.
How is this paradise to be reached? By right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, called the three jewels, a phrase familiar to Buddhism.
The right faith is complete confidence in Mahavira and his teaching.
Right knowledge is correct theology as outlined above. Knowledge is of five degrees of which the highest is called Kevalam or omniscience. This sounds ambitious, but the special method of reasoning favoured by the Jains is the modest Syadvada[258] or doctrine of may-be, which holds that you can (1) affirm the existence of a thing from one point of view, (2) deny it from another, and (3) affirm both existence and non-existence with reference to it at different times. If (4) you should think of affirming existence and non-existence at the same time and from the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of.
The essence of the doctrine, so far as one can disentangle it from scholastic terminology, seems just, for it amounts to this, that as to matters of experience it is impossible to formulate the whole and complete truth, and as to matters which transcend experience language is inadequate: also that Being is a.s.sociated with production, continuation and destruction. This doctrine is called _anekanta-vada_, meaning that Being is not one and absolute as the Upanishads a.s.sert: matter is permanent, but changes its shape, and its other accidents. Thus in many points the Jains adopt the common sense and _prima facie_ point of view.
But the doctrines of metempsychosis and Karma are also admitted as obvious propositions, and though the fortunes and struggles of the embodied soul are described in materialistic terms, happiness is never placed in material well-being but in liberation from the material universe.
We cannot be sure that the existing Jain scriptures present these doctrines in their original form, but the full acceptance of metempsychosis, the animistic belief that plants, particles of earth and water have souls and the materialistic phraseology (from which the widely different speculations of the Upanishads are by no means free) agree with what we know of Indian thought about 550 B.C. Jainism like Buddhism ignores the efficacy of ceremonies and the powers of priests, but it bears even fewer signs than Buddhism of being in its origin a protestant or hostile movement. The intellectual atmosphere seems other than that of the Upanishads, but it is very nearly that of the Sankhya philosophy, which also recognizes an infinity of individual souls radically distinct from matter and capable of attaining bliss only by isolation from matter. Of the origin of that important school we know nothing, but it differs from Jainism chiefly in the greater elaboration of its psychological and evolutionary theories and in the elimination of some materialistic ideas. Possibly the same region and climate of opinion gave birth to two doctrines, one simple and practical, inasmuch as it found its princ.i.p.al expression in a religious order, the other more intellectual and scholastic and, at least in the form in which we read it, later[259].
Right conduct is based on the five vows taken by every Jain ascetic, (1) not to kill, (2) not to speak untruth, (3) to take nothing that is not given, (4) to observe chast.i.ty, (5) to renounce all pleasure in external objects. These vows receive an extensive and strict interpretation by means of five explanatory clauses applicable to each and to be construed with reference to deed, word, and thought, to acting, commanding and consenting. Thus the vow not to kill forbids not only the destruction of the smallest insect but also all speech or thought which could bring about a quarrel, and the doing, causing or permitting of any action which could even inadvertently injure living beings, such as carelessness in walking. Naturally such rules can be kept only by an ascetic, and in addition to them asceticism is expressly enjoined. It is either internal or external. The former takes such forms as repentance, humility, meditation and the suppression of all desires: the latter comprises various forms of self-denial, culminating in death by starvation. This form of religious suicide is prescribed for those who have undergone twelve years" penance and are ripe for Nirvana[260] but it is wrong if adopted as a means of shortening austerities. Numerous inscriptions record such deaths and the head-teachers of the Digambaras are said still to leave the world in this way.
Important but not peculiar to Jainism is the doctrine of the periodical appearance of great teachers who from time to time restore the true faith[261]. The same idea meets us in the fourteen Ma.n.u.s, the incarnations of Vishnu, and the series of Buddhas who preceded Gotama.
The Jain saints are sometimes designated as Buddha, Kevalin, Siddha, Tathagata and Arhat (all Buddhist t.i.tles) but their special appellation is Jina or conqueror which is, however, also used by Buddhists[262]. It was clearly a common notion in India that great teachers appear at regular intervals and that one might reasonably be expected in the sixth century B.C. The Jains gave preference or prominence to the t.i.tles Jina or Tirthankara: the Buddhists to Buddha or Tathagata.
2
According to the Jain scriptures all Jinas are born in the warrior caste, never among Brahmans. The first called Rishabha, who was born an almost inexpressibly[263] long time ago and lived 8,400,000 years, was the son of a king of Ayodhya. But as ages elapsed, the lives of his successors and the intervals which separated them became shorter.
Parsva, the twenty-third Jina, must have some historical basis[264]. We are told that he lived 250 years before Mahavira, that his followers still existed in the time of the latter: that he permitted the use of clothes and taught that four and not five vows were necessary[265]. Both Jain and Buddhist scriptures support the idea that Mahavira was a reviver and reformer rather than an originator. The former do not emphasize the novelty of his revelation and the latter treat Jainism as a well-known form of error without indicating that it was either new or attributable to one individual.
Mahavira, or the great hero, is the common designation of the twenty-fourth Jina but his personal name was Vardhamana. He was a contemporary of the Buddha but somewhat older and belonged to a Kshatriya clan, variously called Jnata, nata, or naya. His parents lived in a suburb of Vaisali and were followers of Parsva. When he was in his thirty-first year they decided to die by voluntary starvation and after their death he renounced the world and started to wander naked in western Bengal, enduring some persecution as well as self-inflicted penances. After thirteen years of this life, he believed that he had attained enlightenment and appeared as the Jina, the head of a religious order called Nirga??has (or Niga??has). This word, which means unfettered or free from bonds, is the name by which the Jains are generally known in Buddhist literature and it occurs in their own scriptures, though it gradually fell out of use. Possibly it was the designation of an order claiming to have been founded by Parsva and accepted by Mahavira.
The meagre accounts of his life relate that he continued to travel for nearly thirty years and had eleven princ.i.p.al disciples. He apparently influenced much the same region as the Buddha and came in contact with the same personalities, such as kings Bimbisara and Ajatasattu. He had relations with Makkhali Gosala and his disciples disputed with the Buddhists[266] but it does not appear that he himself ever met Gotama.
He died at the age of seventy-two at Pava near Rajagaha. Only one of his princ.i.p.al disciples, Sudharman, survived him and a schism broke out immediately after his death. There had already been one in the fifteenth year of his teaching brought about by his son-in-law.
3
We have no information about the differences on which these schisms turned, but Jainism is still split into two sects which, though following in most respects identical doctrines and customs, refuse to intermarry or eat together. Their sacred literature is not the same and the evidence of inscriptions indicates that they were distinct at the beginning of the Christian era and perhaps much earlier.
The Digambara sect, or those who are clothed in air, maintain that absolute nudity is a necessary condition of saintship: the other division or Svetambaras, those who are dressed in white, admit that Mahavira went about naked, but hold that the use of clothes does not impede the highest sanct.i.ty, and also that such sanct.i.ty can be attained by women, which the Digambaras deny. Nudity as a part of asceticism was practised by several sects in the time of Mahavira[267] but it was also reprobated by others (including all Buddhists) who felt it to be barbarous and unedifying. It is therefore probable that both Digambaras and Svetambaras existed in the infancy of Jainism, and the latter may represent the older sect reformed or exaggerated by Mahavira. Thus we are told[268] that "the law taught by Vardhamana forbids clothes but that of the great sage Parsva allows an under and an upper garment." But it was not until considerably later that the schism was completed by the const.i.tution of two different canons[269]. At the present day most Digambaras wear the ordinary costume of their district and only the higher ascetics attempt to observe the rule of nudity. When they go about they wrap themselves in a large cloth, but lay it aside when eating. The Digambaras are divided into four princ.i.p.al sects and the Svetambaras into no less than eighty-four, which are said to date from the tenth century A.D.