The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0080/00804.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00804}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter III: Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
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$Subject{buddha
right
order
way
life
salvation
suffering
cause
jain
buddhism}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter III: Part I

The Great Heresies

     Ascetic Orders - The Origin of the Jains - The Way of Salvation - The
Order - Buddhism - The Life of Buddha - The Saving Truths - The Mendicant
Brotherhood - Buddha's Last Days - Primitive Buddhist Doctrine - Rebirth Not
Transmigration - The Eightfold Path - The Goal, Nirvana - The Order and Its
Rule - History of Buddhism in India - Councils and Schisms - The Higher Goal
of the Mahayana - Metaphysics - Influence of Popular Religions - Decadence and
Extinction in India - Buddhism in Other Lands.

     In the sixth century there were great numbers of men who, leaving their
homes and sundering all social ties, lived as hermits or mendicants, devoting
themselves to the quest of salvation in various ways.  It was universally
assumed that sacrifices to the gods, moral integrity, goodness to fellowmen,
did not lead to the goal; for good works were still works, and all voluntary
deeds entailed their appropriate consequences in another life, keeping the
doer thus bound fast in the endless chain.  Only the sovereign knowledge which
enabled a man to say, "This is not my deed, this is not I," brought
liberation.

     The seekers of salvation were perhaps at the beginning solitary ascetics,
as many have been in more modern times; but in the sixth century we find them
gathering in companies about men whose teaching and example gave promise that
by following them others might reach the goal, and more or less loosely
organised in orders or brotherhoods having their own rule, professing and
propagating a specific doctrine or method, superior to all others, if not the
only way of deliverance.  Though our first evidence about these orders or
sects comes from Buddhist and Jain sources, there is good reason to think that
the movement began a century, perhaps even two centuries, earlier.

     Two of these sects attained historical importance, the Jains and the
Buddhists.  The former still survives in India, beyond whose bounds it never
spread, numbering, by the most recent census, about 1,300,000 adherents;
Buddhism, long since extinct in the peninsula of India, was carried by
missionary effort to the countries beyond, and remains the religion not only
of Farther India, but of a great part of eastern Asia.

     The historical Jain sect, by their original name, the Nirgranthas
(Nigganthas), those who are loosed from bonds, "the emancipated," was founded
in the latter part of the sixth century B. C. by Vardhamana, an older
contemporary of Buddha.  According to the Jain books, ^1 however, this was not
the beginning of the religion, but a revival or restoration; and many European
scholars are inclined to regard Parcva, the next preceding Jina in the series
of twenty-four, who is said to have lived two hundred and fifty years earlier,
as a historical person.

[Footnote 1: The Jain scriptures consist of forty-five Agamas, of which the
eleven Angas are the oldest, and appear to contain in substance the teaching
of Mahavira.  Translations by H. Jacobi, "Jaina Sutras," in Sacred Books of
the East, XXII and XLV.]

     Vardhamana, ^2 more commonly called Mahavira, "the great hero," and Jina,
"the victorious" (whence his followers have the name Jainas), was the son of
petty prince or baron in Magadha.  When he was thirty years old, he left his
home and became an ascetic.  After twelve years of self-mortification, he
achieved the end of his quest.  Thereupon he began to proclaim the truths
which Parcva and the Jinas before him had taught, and gained many converts,
who in part became members of the mendicant order, in part continued to live
in the world under a rule for laymen.  The resemblance of this account to the
story of Buddha is sufficiently explained by the fact that the two sects arose
in the same age and region and under identical conditions, without supposing
that one has served as a pattern for the other.

[Footnote 2: In Buddhist books usually called by his family name, Nataputta.]

     Jainism is anti-Brahmanic, rejecting the Vedas and the authority of the
priests.  It is an atheistic, dualistic system, but differs radically from the
Sankhya philosophy in lodging activity, not in the primary world-substance,
but in the individual souls.  These souls by their activity produce works
(karman, the deed with its entail, good or bad), and are thereby enthralled in
bodiliness and pass from existence to existence in the round of retributive
rebirths, sinking by evil deeds to lower forms of life or rising by good to
the state of the gods, but not even so escaping their fate.  There is no
deliverance but in making an end of karman once for all and altogether.

     This was the universal belief of the time; what is distinctive is the way
by which the karma is to be got rid of.  To this three things are necessary,
namely, right faith, right knowledge, right living - the so-called Three
Jewels.  The right faith is that the Jina (Victor) has overcome the world, has
found the way of salvation, and is a refuge to believers; the right knowledge
is the knowledge of the metaphysics and psychology of the religion as taught
by the founder - what the world is, and what the soul, and how the soul can
emerge victorious from the struggle; right living means living, according to
the precepts of the founder, in such a way as to stop the production of karma
by suppressing its cause.  This cause, in the Jain analysis, is the activity
of the soul; the remedy, accordingly, is to check the impulses to action by
control of the senses.  The effect of deeds done in former existences or in
the present life before conversion must be annulled by self-mortification.  As
death approaches, a Jain may extinguish the last remains of karma by starving
himself.  In the value which it puts on asceticism, Jainism is in the main
current of the times, and stands much closer to Brahmanism than does Buddhism.

     The goal of these endeavours is Nirvana, a state of the soul in which it
is free from the entail of deeds (karma) and from bodiliness.  The soul itself
is indestructible, and the great deliverance does not, apparently, imply a
cessation of consciousness.

     The Jain community consists of ascetics (monks and nuns), and the laity
(men and women), who take the fundamental vows in a mitigated interpretation,
but - in contrast to the Buddhist "adherents" - are reckoned as members of the
church.  This peculiarity of organisation is probably one of the reasons why
the Jains have maintained themselves while other sects which were nothing but
ascetic brotherhoods disappeared.

     The primitive atheism of the sect did not satisfy the religious needs of
the masses, and the veneration of the founder grew in the course of time into
a worship.  Temples - perhaps the earliest temples built in India - were
erected to him, with images, festivals, offerings of flowers and incense - a
complete cultus.  The earlier Jinas took their place by his side, and along
with them in later times Casanadevis, female powers who execute the will of
the Jinas like the Caktis of Hinduism.

     A split in the church occurred about the third century B. C., and divided
the Jain ascetics into two branches, the Digambaras, or "sky-clad," with whom
nakedness is essential to holiness, and the Cvetambaras, or "white-robed," who
entertained the milder opinion that garments, provided they are sufficiently
simple, are not an obstacle to salvation.  Other issues, concerning, for
instance, the canonicity of parts of the scriptures, as well as dogmatic
differences, also divide the two parties.

     The Jain ascetics early ceased to be homeless beggars and took up their
abode in monasteries.  In later