User:Fowler&fowler/Sources for Jainism

Note: This is a subpage of my user page. Please do not edit it or leave messages on its talk page. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  14:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

The sentences in the ancient history section of the India page on Buddhism, and Jainism state: "'The emerging urbanisation and the orthodoxies of this age also created the religious reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism, both of which became independent religions. Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle class; chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. Jainism came into prominence around the same time during the life of its exemplar, Mahavira. In an age of increasing urban wealth, both religions held up renunciation as an ideal, and both established long-lasting monasteries.'"

These have been contested by various editors in the RfC on Talk:India titled, "Was Jaininsm a reform movement," (commencing 10 August 2013). Listed below are, what I consider, relevant reliable sources for the material contained in the sentences.


 * Other links:
 * WP Fringe theories noticeboard:Pushing antiquity on Jainism articles (permalink).

History Sources

 * Quote: "The Gupta culture of the classical period owes much to formative processes dating from around 500 BCE, a period usually assigned to the religious careers of the founders of Buddhism and Jainism (although recent re-evaluation of the evidence now assigns their activities to a date closer to the end of the fifth century)."
 * Quote: "This new Gangetic civilisation found its spiritual expression in a reform movement which was a reaction to the Brahmin-Kshatriya alliance of the Late Vedic Age. This reform  movement is mainly identified with the teachings of Gautama Buddha who is regarded as the first historic figure of Indian history.  The date of his death (parinirvana) has always been a controversial issue.  ... modern historians and Indologists had generally accepted c.483 BC as the date of his death.  But ... archeological evidence seems to indicate that the Buddha lived in the fifth rather than the sixth century ....  The Buddha, however, was not the only great reformer of the age.  There was also Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, who is supposed to have been a younger contemporary of the Buddha."
 * Quote: "The doubts expressed in the Creation Hymn were symptomatic of a wider spirit of inquiry. Local beliefs and customs were now being incorporated into Vedic practice. The resulting concepts were not the expression of any 'pure tradition', but were an amalgam from many varied sources. Some have argued that the concepts of the Upanishads and of asceticism grew not from a single, brahmanical tradition, but from the thinking of the many and varied groups that constituted Indian society at the time. This may be so. But it is perhaps more valid to look for inspirations and intentions as they emerged from the actual situations faced by various groups, with their search for answers in what they seem to have perceived as a world of almost bewildering change. (New paragraph) Some changes encouraged ideas of asceticism, of people withdrawing from the community and living either as hermits or in small groups away from centres of habitation. Asceticism could have had either of two purposes: to acquire more than ordinary powers by extraordinary control over the physical body, as in yoga, and through dhyana, meditation; or to seek freedom from having to adjust to an increasingly regulated society by physically withdrawing from it, evidenced by the practice of renunciation at a young age being regarded as a distancing from Vedic ritual and from the rules of the normative texts. (New paragraph) The intention was not a life-negating philosophy through an escape from social obligations, but an attempt to find an alternative style of life conforming to a philosophy and an ethic different from what had now become the conventional. The impact of this possibility is frequently imprinted on events and situations in the history of India. This is sometimes taken for an impassive spirituality, whereas in effect it assisted on occasion in giving a radical turn to Indian society, or at least to accommodating radical ideas and behaviour. Renunciation of social obligations, implicit in asceticism, encouraged a kind of counter-culture and this became an accepted strand of religious and social thought in India. Some forms of Indian asceticism, although not all, have a socio-political dimension and these cannot be marginalized as merely the wish to negate life. (pp. 131–132)"
 * Quote: "The centrality of the yajna became a characteristic of Vedic Brahmanism. The contesting of this centrality released a range of new philosophical concepts and religious articulations. This is evident from the Upanishads, and from the ideologies that drew on these in the subsequent period, as well as from a range of other teachers who introduced new forms of belief and worship. The brahmanical contribution to the discussion in the Upanishads — what became the interconnected notions of karma and samsara — also became pivotal to the confrontation of the Shramanic sects such as the Buddhist and the Jaina, with Vedic Brahmanism, albeit in a differently defined form; and it was foundational to many sects of an even later period, giving rise to what has come to be called Puranic Hinduism, which was in many ways a departure from Vedic Brahmanism. (New paragraph) It was also a time when various social groups left their imprint on the physical landscape. Small patches of forests and wasteland were cleared for cultivation to feed not only the growing population, but also to provide for the incipient centres of exchange. Some of these grew into towns by the mid-first millennium and were the base for urbanization in the Ganges Plain. The people who saw themselves as aryas were essentially unconcerned with whether they were indigenous or alien, since arya comes to be used as signifying status and culture. The difference is apparent from the Rig-Veda and the later Vedas. In the former, the divide between the arya and the dasa relates to language, ritual and custom. In the latter, there appears to have been a reshuffling of these and the divide changes to the arya being the respected one and dasa being a member of the subordinated group, but irrespective of origins. The words are taken from the earlier Veda but have by now acquired another meaning. (pp. 135–136)
 * Quote: "But, of all these sects, the two that came to stay were Jainism and Buddhism, both of which were to become independent religions. Part of the reason for this may have been that theirs was a more holistic understanding of contemporary changes than that of other sects, and, in the break-away from the earlier systems of thought and ethics, they reflected a more sensitive response to the pressures of the changes. Jaina ideas, thought to have been in circulation earlier, posited previous teachers — the tirthankaras or makers of fords — with the claims to an ancestry of the ongoing teaching. Claims to an earlier succession of teachers were also made by some other sects. Mahavira gave shape to these ideas in the sixth century, and this led to the organization and spread of the Jaina sect which was initially called Nirgrantha. Jaina is a secondary formation from Jina, 'the Conqueror', which refers to Mahavira. He is said to have renounced his family at a young age to become an ascetic. For twelve years he wandered, seeking the truth, and eventually gained enlightenment. Mahavira's teaching was confined to the Ganges Plain, though in later centuries the larger following of Jainism was in other parts of the subcontinent, particularly Karnataka and western India. (p. 166)"
 * Quote: "Unlike Vedic Brahmanism, or the later Puranic Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism had specific historical teachers that have now come to be viewed almost as founders, .... (p. 171)"
 * Quote: "Another kshatriya prince who founded an order of monks and rejected Vedic and Brahmanic authority was Vardharmāna Mahāvīra (ca. 540-468 B.C.). Born in Besarh, near the modern city of Patna, Mahavira (literally "Great Hero") was a son of the chief of the Jñātrika tribe, and like the Buddha, he abandoned his hedonistic life to become a wandering ascetic when he was about thirty years old. He seems first to have joined a sect of nudist ascetics called the Nirgranthas ("Free from Bonds") with whom he remained for about ten years. The founder of the Nirgranthas was named Parshva and may have been Mahavira's guru. After his death Mahavira and his own followers split from the parent group to establish a new sect, the Jainas. Jaina means "follower of jina (conqueror)," the honorific title bestowed upon Mahavira for what must have been his remarkable powers of self-control. He also came to be known as the twenty-fourth tirthankara ("ford maker") after the Jain canon was finally, recorded at the Council of Vallabhi in 454 A.D. The tirthankaras, who have "crossed over the waters" to preach the faith, are the Jain equivalents of gods, and Mahavira was the last of them; Parshva was the twenty-third. Mahavira adhered to a more extreme form of asceticism than did the Buddha. He not only went naked, but also advocated and practiced self-torture and death by starvation as the surest paths to salvation. Though it took him thirteen years from the time he resolved to starve himself to death before he finally succeeded in doing so, Mahavira was supposedly the last Jain to attain the pure and perfect peace of tirthankara paradise, the topmost level of release from mundane matters, which resembles moksha and nirvana in its total lack of karmic activity. (p. 50)"
 * Quote: "Conclusions to Chapter (Cities, Kings and Renunciants: c. 600–300 BCE): The period c. 600-300 BCE marks the early historical period in north India. It was an age when the increasing social, economic, and political complexities of the previous centuries manifested themselves in the emergence of cities. The vast majority of people, however, continued to live in villages. Urbanism created new socio-economic divisions and elites. The institution of jati (caste) started taking shape. The strengthening of patriarchal control within the household led to the increasing subordination of women. These centuries were marked by a remarkable prominence of the ideal of renunciation and an intense level of philosophical debate and questioning. Buddhism and Jainism were two among many philosophical schools and established long-enduring monastic institutions closely connected with their laity. At the political level, there were two competing types of polities—the oligarchies and monarchies. The growth of the Magadhan empire was underway and involved the defeat and marginalization of other states. It was a short step from the Nanda to the Maurya empire. (p. 319)"
 * Quote: "The most significant upheavals in traditional Indian history were not dynastic or regime changes, but the challenges to the religious organization of society through the reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism against ritualistic Brahminism in ancient India, ..."
 * Quote: "Another kshatriya prince who founded an order of monks and rejected Vedic and Brahmanic authority was Vardharmāna Mahāvīra (ca. 540-468 B.C.). Born in Besarh, near the modern city of Patna, Mahavira (literally "Great Hero") was a son of the chief of the Jñātrika tribe, and like the Buddha, he abandoned his hedonistic life to become a wandering ascetic when he was about thirty years old. He seems first to have joined a sect of nudist ascetics called the Nirgranthas ("Free from Bonds") with whom he remained for about ten years. The founder of the Nirgranthas was named Parshva and may have been Mahavira's guru. After his death Mahavira and his own followers split from the parent group to establish a new sect, the Jainas. Jaina means "follower of jina (conqueror)," the honorific title bestowed upon Mahavira for what must have been his remarkable powers of self-control. He also came to be known as the twenty-fourth tirthankara ("ford maker") after the Jain canon was finally, recorded at the Council of Vallabhi in 454 A.D. The tirthankaras, who have "crossed over the waters" to preach the faith, are the Jain equivalents of gods, and Mahavira was the last of them; Parshva was the twenty-third. Mahavira adhered to a more extreme form of asceticism than did the Buddha. He not only went naked, but also advocated and practiced self-torture and death by starvation as the surest paths to salvation. Though it took him thirteen years from the time he resolved to starve himself to death before he finally succeeded in doing so, Mahavira was supposedly the last Jain to attain the pure and perfect peace of tirthankara paradise, the topmost level of release from mundane matters, which resembles moksha and nirvana in its total lack of karmic activity. (p. 50)"
 * Quote: "Conclusions to Chapter (Cities, Kings and Renunciants: c. 600–300 BCE): The period c. 600-300 BCE marks the early historical period in north India. It was an age when the increasing social, economic, and political complexities of the previous centuries manifested themselves in the emergence of cities. The vast majority of people, however, continued to live in villages. Urbanism created new socio-economic divisions and elites. The institution of jati (caste) started taking shape. The strengthening of patriarchal control within the household led to the increasing subordination of women. These centuries were marked by a remarkable prominence of the ideal of renunciation and an intense level of philosophical debate and questioning. Buddhism and Jainism were two among many philosophical schools and established long-enduring monastic institutions closely connected with their laity. At the political level, there were two competing types of polities—the oligarchies and monarchies. The growth of the Magadhan empire was underway and involved the defeat and marginalization of other states. It was a short step from the Nanda to the Maurya empire. (p. 319)"
 * Quote: "The most significant upheavals in traditional Indian history were not dynastic or regime changes, but the challenges to the religious organization of society through the reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism against ritualistic Brahminism in ancient India, ..."
 * Quote: "Conclusions to Chapter (Cities, Kings and Renunciants: c. 600–300 BCE): The period c. 600-300 BCE marks the early historical period in north India. It was an age when the increasing social, economic, and political complexities of the previous centuries manifested themselves in the emergence of cities. The vast majority of people, however, continued to live in villages. Urbanism created new socio-economic divisions and elites. The institution of jati (caste) started taking shape. The strengthening of patriarchal control within the household led to the increasing subordination of women. These centuries were marked by a remarkable prominence of the ideal of renunciation and an intense level of philosophical debate and questioning. Buddhism and Jainism were two among many philosophical schools and established long-enduring monastic institutions closely connected with their laity. At the political level, there were two competing types of polities—the oligarchies and monarchies. The growth of the Magadhan empire was underway and involved the defeat and marginalization of other states. It was a short step from the Nanda to the Maurya empire. (p. 319)"
 * Quote: "The most significant upheavals in traditional Indian history were not dynastic or regime changes, but the challenges to the religious organization of society through the reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism against ritualistic Brahminism in ancient India, ..."
 * Quote: "The most significant upheavals in traditional Indian history were not dynastic or regime changes, but the challenges to the religious organization of society through the reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism against ritualistic Brahminism in ancient India, ..."

Archeology, Philology, and Epigraphy Sources

 * Quote: "We have dwelt on this region — the Madhyadeśa — in some detail because it played so important a part in the formation of what we may call the second, or Gangetic civilization of India. Lal has drawn attention to the fact that many of the places mentioned in the Mahabharata have been found to have settlements of this period. As we have seen the settlements often followed directly on even earlier settlements of the final post-Harappan phases—those associated with the red 'Ochre Coloured' and black-and-red wares. However, by the end of the period a more or less uniform culture, whose hallmark is the black lustrous pottery known as Northern Black Polished ware (or NBP), extended from the lower Ganges to the Punjab. This culture provided the milieu for the early cities of classical India, which find repeated mention in the accounts of the life of Gautama the Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of the Jain sect, no less than for such dynasties as the Śaiśunāgas, the Nandas and the Mauryas; and for the development of the characteristic Indian script, the Brāhmī lipi, and of Indian coinage. To the east of the junction of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers lies the central region of the Ganges valley, comprising eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar. ... The distinctive eastern sequence, in which a black-and-red ware plays a prominent role, was first recognized in excavations at Sonepur (Sonpur) in Gaya district in 1956. The sequence at this site has now been refined by further work, and a related sequence revealed by excavations at a number of other sites, some of great historical renown, ... At all these sites Painted Grey ware is absent, although in the earliest phase a plain grey ware is found, and the black and red gives way directly to the Northern Black Polished ware around 500 B.C. (pp. 319–320)"
 * Quote: "The period was also one of intense religious ferment. Apart from the orthodox schools there were several influential schools founded by heterodox teachers. These teachings included the fatalism of Makkhali Gosālā and the Ājīvaka sect he founded; the frank materialism of Ajita Kesakambali, the founder of the Charvaka or Lokayata sect; and the pessimism of Mahāvīra, the founder of the Jain religion. However, the most influential of all was the teaching of Gautama, the Buddha. This appears as a brilliant reaction to the idealism and theism of the orthodox Brahmans. All these great teachers flourished around the sixth century B.C., and their works together constitute a remarkable body of original thought. (pp. 361–362)"
 * Quote: "It seems likely that by about 500 B.C., or about a century after this if we accept the later dates (Norman 1991: 300-312) for the beginnings of Buddhism and Jainism, the vernacular dialects, which are sometimes called Prakrits, were appreciably different from the Sanskrit of the brahmanical class. Not only were there morphological and phonological differences of the sort which I have mentioned, but there were also differences of vocabulary (not simply due to the adoption of words for animals or plants which were unlikely to be a part of the brahmans' language), and variations in the way in which words were formed, as well as ways in which they were combined. External sandhi in Pali, for example, differs fundamentally from that in Sanskrit. (p. 281)"
 * Quote: "The rise of MIA (Middle Indo-Aryan) as inscriptional and literary language coincided roughly with the foundation of the new religions of Buddhism and Jainism round about 500 to 400 BC. Naturally, the prestige of Sanskrit—the language of the Brahmins—was resisted by those who questioned the authority of the Vedas, and for this reason the early texts of the Buddhists and the Jains are in varieties of Middle Indo-Aryan. The Buddha is reported to have said that his teachings should be given to the people not in Sanskrit, but in their own language. This seems to be the reason for the multiplicity of languages the early Buddhism made use of. (p. 182)"
 * Quote: "Varieties of MIA were the chosen languages of Buddhism and Jainism since about 500 BC. To reach the masses, the two religious faiths opted to use the spoken language. Buddha used his own Prākrit dialect to spread his doctrine. He rejected the plea of his Brahmin monks, who preferred Sanskrit to Prākrit, and ordained that 'everyone should use his own particular dialect in reciting the sacred texts' (Deshpande 1993:7). The Buddhist literature is mostly in Pāli. Mahavira in the Jain tradition preached in Ardhamāgadhī. (p. 55)"
 * Quote: "The Upaniṣads (Up.) contain the secret teaching. by a variety of late Vedic teachers, of early philosophical speculation about the nature of the world and of humans and their fate after death, as well as the earliest discussion of the workings of rebirth and karma. Various small heterogeneous sections have subsequently been added, such as last admonitions of the teacher to his "graduating," departing students (Witzel 1980. Thieme 1989). The texts were often called Rahasya "secret," as they were supposed to be learned only by specially selected students, which explains their often less well preserved state of transmission. Tradition, indeed, sees the Ups as the end of the Veda (vedānta), that is of the four "historical" levels of the Saṃhitās, Br.s, Ārs, and Up.s, while in fact, the late Vedic Sūtras (see below) still are an integral part of the Vedic canon. (New paragraph) It is from the background of the Brāhmaṇa style texts that the thinking of the Upanișads emerges. If not radically new, it still involves a thorough rethinking of the existing correlative premises, in part influenced by late Vedic social conditions of the eastern territories of North India (Kosala, Videha). Here, a thorough reorganization of brāhmaṇa style texts (in ŚB) took place, including a rethinking of many of the earlier "theological" positions. Further, the increasing Sanskritization of the area along western (Kuru) models brought about the formation of canonical texts, a general ordering of Śrauta procedure, and new deliberations of its inherent meaning (Witzel 1997a,b). (New paragraph) Thus, the Upaniṣads do not break with tradition but rather continue it, influenced by the current and local religious background (Renou 1953). While they are often treated as the beginning of philosophical tradition in India (or as a precursor to early Buddhist and Jain thought) they arc in fact the almost inevitable outcome of the intellectual development of the Brāmaṇa period, when such questioning was prominent both inside and between the Vedic schools (śākhā). However, it was expressed differently, not in Upaniṣadic dialogue form, but by statements such as "some say . .." or by the frequent quotations of divergent views in the brāmaṇa type texts, especially in ŚB where various "solutions" to a problem are habitually discussed and still presented as authoritative, positive statements of truths. The Up.s. however, contain discussions in the form of real dialogues, involving severe questioning and reluctant admission of innocence or boastful claims of knowledge. (p. 83)"
 * Quote: "Several factors thus come together and lead to a qualitative breakthrough, which results in the new karmic rebirth idea and, based on increasing use of higher levels of correlations, in the assertion of the identity of the human soul (ātman) with that of brahman (neuter) in such famous sentences as tal tvam asi (ChU 6.10.3, Brereton 1986). ... However, the often repeated conviction that it was Kṣatriyas who introduced the arma concept is far-fetched (Horsch 1966, Olivelle 1996: xxxiv). The mentioning of the topic by a ing, a god (Varuṇa), or Yājñavalya's secretive conference rather are literary devices (Witzel 1997a) which merely underline the importance of the theme. ... Similarly, the idea that it was the Jainas, the local aboriginal people, etc. who "invented" these ideas is, of course nothing more than an admission of ignorance (O'Flaherty 1981), as there simply are no early records of the Jainas and even less of the aboriginal inhabitants.  Rather, later Vedic thought quite naturally led to this stage, and to a whole range of more or less contemporary and quite diverse points of view, as discussed in the Pali canon (Dīghanikāya 2). (p. 85)"
 * Quote: "True heterodoxy is attested by ca. 400 BCE when several such systems had developed, including those of wandering teachers such as the Buddha and Mahāvīra (Dīghanikāya 2). Nearly all them stem from eastern North India, where the constantly changing cultural ferment favored dialogue and competition. Yājñavalkya's departure into homelessness (BĀU 4.5.15) takes up the tradition of (long distance) wandering by Veda students and Vrātyas; indeed, the Buddhist saṇgha has, unobserved so far, some vrātya features as well: a single leader of a larger group of equals who wander about in the countryside and live on extortion (or by begging), stay away from settlements, have special dress and speech. etc. (p. 90)
 * Quote: "3.7 The historical stages of Indo-Aryan: The long internal history of Indo-Aryan in India, spanning about 3,500 years, may be divided linguistically into three stages: Old, Middle, and New Indo-Aryan, conventionally (and henceforth in this book) abbreviated as OIA, MIA, NIA. These may be taken as corresponding roughly to the periods 1500 BC-600 BC, 600 BC- 1000 AD and 1000 AD-present respectively. These may be subdivided further into Early, Middle or 'Second', and Late, and attempts have been made (e.g., by Chatterji) to assign approximate dates to the latter also, but such attempts confront two additional problems: (1) a given linguistic stage was reached at different times in different areas- i.e. earlier in the cast than in the west, which was more conservative; and (2) the literary languages on which our knowledge of the stages is based typically flourished (or at any rate are represented by surviving texts) at periods subsequent to those they represent linguistically, that is, when the vernacular had already evolved further. How much earlier the spoken language was current on which was based the literary dialect (represented by texts whose own date is often also uncertain) is under the circumstances a matter of guesswork. Even if absolute dates are hard to come by, it can usually be said with a fair amount of certainty that a given literary dialect represents an "older" or a "younger" linguistic stage than another given literary dialect. A linguistic form B in such a sample usually has to be derived from a linguistic form A and not the other way around. On this basis, the older recorded forms of Indo-Aryan (several of which we have already had ample occasion to refer to) may be listed and classified as follows:
 * I.A. Early OIA
 * 1. VEDIC: based apparently on a far-western dialect, perhaps influenced by Iranian; further substages may he distinguished, the language of Books II—VII of the Rig Veda being the most archaic, that of the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras the least.
 * I.B. Later OIA
 * 1. CLASSICAL SANSKRIT: based on a dialect of the midland (western Ganges valley, eastern Punjab, Haryana), although influenced by Vedic. Later literature was much influenced by MIA (with which it is contemporary), remaining OIA only in phonetics and morphology.
 * II.A Early MIA
 * 1. AŚOKAN PRĀKRITS: various regional dialects of the third century BC (eastern, east-central, southwestern, northwestern), with the notable exception of the midland, recorded in the inscriptions of the Emperor Aśoka on rocks and pillars in various parts of the subcontinent.
 * 2. PĀLI: language of the Hinayana Buddhist canon and other literature, apparently based on a midland dialect possibly influenced by the original eastern forms of the remembered Buddhist discourses, and subsequently by Sanskrit. Again, the language of the metrical portion of the canon proper, or Gathas, is more archaic than the language of the commentaries and other literature.
 * 3. EARLY ARDHAMĀGADHI: language of the earliest Jain Sūtras. (Most Ardhamāgadhi represents a later MIA stage, however [see below].)
 * II.B. MIA, Second Stage
 * 1. NIYA PRAKRIT: administrative language of an Indo-Aryan polity (i.e. besides the Scythian and Tocharian ones) in Chinese Turkestan, known from third century AD documents, "northwestern" in type but full of Iranian and other loanwords. Akin to this but somewhat earlier (first century) is what is sometimes called GANDHARI, the language of the Khotan manuscript of the Dhammapada.
 * 2. ARDHAMĀGADHI: supposedly the ancient language of Kosala Oudh or modern eastern UP), known from the Jain canon (not finalized until the sixth century AD) and from early Buddhist dramas; of varying age.
 * 3. LATER (= post-Asokan) INSCRIPTIONAL PRAKRIT: until replaced (fifth century) totally by Sanskrit in inscriptions.
 * 4. MAGADHI: language of Bihar, and presumably of the Mauryan Empire (fourth—second centuries BC); stylized subvarieties represented by the conventionalized speech of lower-class characters in Sanskrit drama. (pp. 51–52)
 * Quote: "The history of writing in India, insofar as it applies to the material treated in this book, is essentially coextensive with the history of the Brāhmī script and its many derivatives, and of the Kharoṣṭhī script. While the latter, though important in its day, was a regional script which died out without any descendants, the former is the parent of one of the major script families in the world, comprising not only all of the indigenous scripts of South Asia (as opposed to those of Perso-Arabic or European origin) but also several other major scripts of central and especially Southeast Asia. ... On the whole, traditional (i.e. pre-Islamic) India was much less oriented toward the written word than many other ancient and traditional cultures such as those of classical China and Japan or of the Islamic World.  From Vedic times on, and even to the present day in some cultural contexts, it is oral rather than written learning that has always been esteemed in India as true knowledge, an attitude reflected in such proverbs as ... "Knowldge in a book [is like] money in someone else's hand." ... The same orientation no doubt also explains the paucity of descriptions of writing as such in Sanskrit and related literatures. ... beyond legendary accounts ..., the literature of Brahmanical-Hindu tradition has, on the whole, little to say about writing as such; this, in striking contrast with its profound fascination with (spoken) language and grammar.  The picture is somewhat different with the heterodox traditions of Buddhism and Jainism, which (especially the former) exhibit a higher esteem for the written word.  Moreover, it is only in the texts of these traditions that we find lists of Indic scripts. (pp. 7–8)"
 * Quote: "After more than a century of study, the early history of writing in India remains problematic. It begins with the still undeciphered script found on the seals and other relics of the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished, according to recent estimates, around the second half of the third and first half of the second millennium B.C. But, after the decline of the Indus Valley culture, the graphic record of India is virtually a total blank for well over a thousand years until the time of the Aśokan inscriptions, the earliest definitely datable written records of the historical period, around the middle of the third century B.C. From this time on, written records (epigraphic and, in later centuries, manuscript and other nonepigraphic sources) become increasingly common, so that the development of the Indian scripts and their many derivatives both in and outside of India can, for the most part, be traced in considerable detail from Aśoka's time to the present day. But practically nothing is known of what might have happened in the long period between (very roughly) 1750 and 260 B.C. (p.10)"
 * Quote: "As to archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the antiquity of writing in the historical period, we have only a small handful of brief archaic inscriptions (see 4.3.1.2) which could conceivably be somewhat older than the Aśokan inscriptions. But the weight of scholarly opinion nowadays is in favor of dating such early records as the Piprāwā, Sohgaurā, and Mahāsthān inscriptions as contemporary with or later than Aśoka. Certain paleographic characteristics of the early inscriptions, such as the absence of distinction in some records (e.g., Mahāsthān) of vowel length—mostly for vowels other than a and ā—have sometimes been taken as an indication of their pre-Aśokan antiquity; yet the very same phenomena have been invoked by others in support of arguments for a recent origin and short period of development for the Brāhmī script. (Footnote: 20. All attempts to attribute specific dates to certain of the early inscriptions have been decisively discredited. For example, Ojha's (BPLM 2-3) dating of the Baṛlī inscription (SI 89-90) to the year 84 of a supposed Jaina era of 527 B.C., i.e., to 443 B.C., is out of the question; Sircar dates the inscription to the late second century B.C. on paleographic grounds. (p. 12)"
 * 2. ARDHAMĀGADHI: supposedly the ancient language of Kosala Oudh or modern eastern UP), known from the Jain canon (not finalized until the sixth century AD) and from early Buddhist dramas; of varying age.
 * 3. LATER (= post-Asokan) INSCRIPTIONAL PRAKRIT: until replaced (fifth century) totally by Sanskrit in inscriptions.
 * 4. MAGADHI: language of Bihar, and presumably of the Mauryan Empire (fourth—second centuries BC); stylized subvarieties represented by the conventionalized speech of lower-class characters in Sanskrit drama. (pp. 51–52)
 * Quote: "The history of writing in India, insofar as it applies to the material treated in this book, is essentially coextensive with the history of the Brāhmī script and its many derivatives, and of the Kharoṣṭhī script. While the latter, though important in its day, was a regional script which died out without any descendants, the former is the parent of one of the major script families in the world, comprising not only all of the indigenous scripts of South Asia (as opposed to those of Perso-Arabic or European origin) but also several other major scripts of central and especially Southeast Asia. ... On the whole, traditional (i.e. pre-Islamic) India was much less oriented toward the written word than many other ancient and traditional cultures such as those of classical China and Japan or of the Islamic World.  From Vedic times on, and even to the present day in some cultural contexts, it is oral rather than written learning that has always been esteemed in India as true knowledge, an attitude reflected in such proverbs as ... "Knowldge in a book [is like] money in someone else's hand." ... The same orientation no doubt also explains the paucity of descriptions of writing as such in Sanskrit and related literatures. ... beyond legendary accounts ..., the literature of Brahmanical-Hindu tradition has, on the whole, little to say about writing as such; this, in striking contrast with its profound fascination with (spoken) language and grammar.  The picture is somewhat different with the heterodox traditions of Buddhism and Jainism, which (especially the former) exhibit a higher esteem for the written word.  Moreover, it is only in the texts of these traditions that we find lists of Indic scripts. (pp. 7–8)"
 * Quote: "After more than a century of study, the early history of writing in India remains problematic. It begins with the still undeciphered script found on the seals and other relics of the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished, according to recent estimates, around the second half of the third and first half of the second millennium B.C. But, after the decline of the Indus Valley culture, the graphic record of India is virtually a total blank for well over a thousand years until the time of the Aśokan inscriptions, the earliest definitely datable written records of the historical period, around the middle of the third century B.C. From this time on, written records (epigraphic and, in later centuries, manuscript and other nonepigraphic sources) become increasingly common, so that the development of the Indian scripts and their many derivatives both in and outside of India can, for the most part, be traced in considerable detail from Aśoka's time to the present day. But practically nothing is known of what might have happened in the long period between (very roughly) 1750 and 260 B.C. (p.10)"
 * Quote: "As to archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the antiquity of writing in the historical period, we have only a small handful of brief archaic inscriptions (see 4.3.1.2) which could conceivably be somewhat older than the Aśokan inscriptions. But the weight of scholarly opinion nowadays is in favor of dating such early records as the Piprāwā, Sohgaurā, and Mahāsthān inscriptions as contemporary with or later than Aśoka. Certain paleographic characteristics of the early inscriptions, such as the absence of distinction in some records (e.g., Mahāsthān) of vowel length—mostly for vowels other than a and ā—have sometimes been taken as an indication of their pre-Aśokan antiquity; yet the very same phenomena have been invoked by others in support of arguments for a recent origin and short period of development for the Brāhmī script. (Footnote: 20. All attempts to attribute specific dates to certain of the early inscriptions have been decisively discredited. For example, Ojha's (BPLM 2-3) dating of the Baṛlī inscription (SI 89-90) to the year 84 of a supposed Jaina era of 527 B.C., i.e., to 443 B.C., is out of the question; Sircar dates the inscription to the late second century B.C. on paleographic grounds. (p. 12)"
 * Quote: "As to archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the antiquity of writing in the historical period, we have only a small handful of brief archaic inscriptions (see 4.3.1.2) which could conceivably be somewhat older than the Aśokan inscriptions. But the weight of scholarly opinion nowadays is in favor of dating such early records as the Piprāwā, Sohgaurā, and Mahāsthān inscriptions as contemporary with or later than Aśoka. Certain paleographic characteristics of the early inscriptions, such as the absence of distinction in some records (e.g., Mahāsthān) of vowel length—mostly for vowels other than a and ā—have sometimes been taken as an indication of their pre-Aśokan antiquity; yet the very same phenomena have been invoked by others in support of arguments for a recent origin and short period of development for the Brāhmī script. (Footnote: 20. All attempts to attribute specific dates to certain of the early inscriptions have been decisively discredited. For example, Ojha's (BPLM 2-3) dating of the Baṛlī inscription (SI 89-90) to the year 84 of a supposed Jaina era of 527 B.C., i.e., to 443 B.C., is out of the question; Sircar dates the inscription to the late second century B.C. on paleographic grounds. (p. 12)"

Anthropology, Religion, and History of Religions Sources

 * Quote: "Traditional Jain belief holds that truths of the Jain religion have always existed; throughout time they are periodically reactivated by a series of omniscient teachers called Fordmakers (Tirthankaras) because their preaching of the Jain religion creates the community of ascetics and their lay supporters which is the Ford by which souls are enabled to cross the ocean of existence. The Ford-makers are also known as Jinas, meaning Conquerers, so-called because their omniscience has been gained as a result of their conquering their desires and passions by means of a life of harsh asceticism; hence a Jain is one who follows the religion of the Conquerers. Although they have superhuman characteristics as a result of their superior spiritual status, the Fordmakers are human, born of human parents. Despite the traditional Jain belief in the uncreated and eternal verities of the religion, it is clear that the historical origins of Jainism began with the most recent Fordmaker, Mahavira, who lived and preached in the areas bordering the lower Ganges valley in the fifth century BC, and that the other Fordmakers, with the possible exception of the one immediately preceding Mahavira, are components of a complex mythology which was not fully elaborated until many years after Mahavira's death. (p xxi)"
 * Quote: "The sixth century B.C.E. saw the appearance of numerous ascetic movements that completely rejected the Vedas, the sacrificial cult that the Vedas taught, and the authority of the brahmans who performed the sacrifices. In general, the new movements were antiritualistic. All, however, except presumably the materialists ... accepted the truth of transmigration and the advisability of escaping from the cycle of rebirth. But they rejected all ideas of creation, whether by a personal God or by an impersonal absolute. For them the universe was the product solely of natural law and went through unending cycles of advance and decline according to natural law. All the new sects, as far as we can see, aimed at releasing their members from the bonds of birth, death, and rebirth by the quickest method. This, they believed, could be achieved only by the complete renunciation of all worldly ties, by owning nothing, or next to nothing, and by devoting all one's time to spiritual activities. Among the most potent causes of evil karman, binding humans to the cycle of rebirth, were acts of violence, especially killing. The ascetic must do everything in his power to avoid even the accidental killing of any creature whatever. (New paragraph) The leaders of the new heterodox sects claimed great antiquity for their doctrines and movements, looking back to former leaders; but it is doubtful if there is much basis for their claims. In an early Indian context, especially, the legitimization of religiophilosophical movements such as these depended on establishing their antiquity, and this could be done only by claiming to reproduce the doctrines of sages of the ancient past. The former Buddhas and former Tirthaṇkaras (of Jainism) have no reliable historical basis, for no earlier ascetic movements of this type are attested anywhere either in the Vedic literature or by archaeology. We do not believe in the existence of earlier śramaṇic movements in the Ganges valliey. This was a new development in the religious life of India, which had its roots not in the śramaṇic movements but in the sages of the Upaniṣads. (pp. 59–60)"
 * Quote: "Chapter 7: RENUNCIATION IN THE UPANISHADS 600 to 200 BCE CHRONOLOGY (ALL DATES BCE)
 * c. 600-500 Aranyakas are composed
 * c. 500 Shrauta Sutras are composcd
 * c. 500-400 Early Upanishads (Brihadaranyaka [BU], Chandogya [CU], Kaushitaki [KauU] are composed
 * c. 500 Pataliputra is founded; Vedic peoples gradually move southward
 * c. 483 or 410 Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, dies
 * c. 468 Vardhamana Mahavira, the Jina, founder of Jainism, dies
 * c. 400-1200 Later Upanishads (Katha [KU], Shvetashvatara [SU] and Mundaka [MU]) are composed
 * c. 300 Grihya Sutras are composed (p. 164)"
 * Quote: "THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL WORLD OF TIIE UPANISHADS: The eastern Ganges at this time, the seventh through the fifth century BCE, was a place of kingdoms dominated by Magadha, whose capital was Rajagri ha, and Koshala-Videha, whose capital was Kashi (Varanasi, Benares). Trade—especially of metals, fine textiles, salt, pottery, and, always, horses—flourished, and the towns were connected by trade routes; all roads led to Kashi. The development of the idea of merit or karma as something 'to be earned, accumulated, occasionally transferred and eventually realized' owes much to the post-Vedic moneyed economy. More generally, where there's trade, people leave home; new commercial classes emerge; and above all, new ideas spread quickly and circulate freely. They certainly did so at this time in India, and there was little to stop them: The Vedas did not constitute a closed canon, and there was no central temporal or religious authority to enforce a canon had there been one. Commerce was facilitated by the rise of prosperous kingdoms and social mobility by the rise of great protostatcs, or oligarchics (maha-janapadas or gana sanghas)," governed by Kshatriya clans. One Brahmin source describes these clans as degenerate Kshatriyas and even Shudras, accusing them of having ceased to honor the Brahmins or to observe Vedic ritual, worshiping at sacred groves instead, and of paying short shrift to sacrifices, using their funds for trade (behavior that goes a long way to explain why the Brahmins called them Shudras). The clans were said to have just two classes, the ruling families and the slaves and laborers, an arrangement that would have posed a serious threat to Brahmin supremacy. Significantly, both Vardhamana Mahavira (also called the Jina), the founder of Jainism and Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, were born into distinquished clans in one of these alternative, nonmonarchical state systems. (p. 165)"
 * Quote: "Although centrally interested in the reality behind cosmic and individual phenomena, the upaniṣads also have much to say about the nature and destiny of the human being. Two important concepts that emerged in later vedic literature are the basis of the upaniṣads' theories of eschatology and ethics. These concepts are karma and rebirth. The word karma, from the verbal root kṛ, "to do", means "action". In the ritual portions of the Veda it refers to the right performance of the sacrifice. In some of the upaniṣads the sense is extended to cover every action of life. What one does, determines one's future condition in this life or in another. A portion of the individual survives the death of the body, and, after a time, is reborn in another body, whose quality is a reflection of the quality of his former deeds: "Those whose conduct here has been good will quickly attain a good womb;. . . but those whose conduct has been evil here will attain an evil womb" (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 5.10.7). This process is then repeated, each birth paving the way for the next in a cycle called saṃsāra. The only means of escape from this endless round is the attainment of the knowledge of brahman. When this happens, the last seeds of karma are consumed, and the individual achieves mokṣa or liberation. These ideas have played an enormously important role in all subsequent religious thought in India, not only in the traditions that descend from the Veda, but also in heterodox systems like Jainism and Buddhism. (p. 60)"
 * Quote: "Vardhamana, later called Mahavira, is said to have been born in 599 BCE near what is now the city of Patna. (This would make him an elder contemporary of the Buddha, as Buddhist sources show him to be. Some scholars, however, believe Mahavira to have been the younger, and adjust the year of his birth accordingly.) ... According to Jaina tradition, Mahavira was the twenty-fourth and last Jina of the present world-cycle.  The twenty-third was Parshvanatha, whose historicity is generally acknowledged.  The others are said to have lived thousands or millions of years ago, and thus escape the scrutiny of the historian.  Mahavira is regarded not so much as the founder of Jainism as its renewer, a human being who by his own efforts rediscovered the Truth that periodically is made available to humanity.( p. 90)"
 * Quote: "The Upaniṣads translated here represent some of the most important literary products in the history of Indian culture and religion, both because they played a critical role in the development of religious ideas in India and because they are valuable as sources for our understanding of the religious, social, and intellectual history of ancient India. The Upanișads were composed at a time of great social, economic, and religious change; they document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions. It is in them that we note for the first time the emergence of central religious concepts of both Hinduism and of the new religious movements, such as Buddhism and Jainism, that emerged not long after the composition of the early Upaniṣads. Such concepts include the doctrine of rebirth, the law of karma that regulates the rebirth process, and the techniques of liberation from the cycle of rebirth, such as mental training associated with Yoga, ascetic self-denial and mortification, and the renunciation of sex, wealth, and family life. Even though theoretically the whole of the vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth, in reality it is the Upaniṣads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanișads are the vedic scriptures par excellence of Hinduism. (p. xxiii)"
 * Quote: Indeed, at a time not too distant from the early Upaniṣads, we have new religions such as Buddhism and Jainism rising in approximately the same geographic region of northern India, religions whose founders are considered to have come from the royal class. The doctrines of the devotional religions that became part of Brahmanism are also depicted as being taught by people belonging to that class, people such as Kṛṣṇa and Rāma who are viewed as incarnations of god Viṣṇu. What is important, however, is not whether a particular doctrine originated among thc Kṣatriyas, but that the new religious climate in northern India, of which the Upanisads were a part, was created through the intellectual interaction among 'new thinkers' within both groups. (p. xxxv)"
 * Quote: Chronology: In spite of claims made by some, in reality, any dating of these documents that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is as stable as a house of cards. The scholarly consensus, well-founded I think, is that the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya are the two earliest Upanișads. We have seen, however, that they are edited texts, some of whose sources are much older than others. The two texts as we have them are, in all likelihood, pre-Buddhist; placing them in the seventh to sixth centuries BCE may be reasonable, give or take a century or so. The three other early prose Upaniṣads—Taittirīya, Aitareya, and Kauṣītaki&mdash;come next; all are probably pre-Buddhist and can be assigned to the sixth to fifth century BCE. (p. xxxvi–xxxvii)"
 * Quote: "There is a longstanding and ongoing scholarly debate regarding the origin of the renouncer tradition. To simplify a somewhat intricate issue, some contend that the origins of Indian asceticism in general and of the renouncer tradition in particular go back to the indigenous non-Aryan population (Bronkhorst 1993. Pande 1978. Singh 1972). Others, on the contrary, see it as an organic and logical development of ideas found in the vedic religious culture (Heesterman 1964). It is time. I think, to move beyond this sterile debate and artificial dichotomy. They are based, on the one hand, on the false premise that the extant vedic texts provide us with an adequate picture of the religious and cultural life of that period spanning over half a millennium. These texts, on the contrary, provide only a tiny window into this period, and that too only throws light on what their priestly authors thought it important to record. It is based, on the other hand, on the untenable conviction that we can isolate Aryan and non-Aryan strands in the Indian culture a millennium or more removed from the original and putative Aryan migrations. It is obvious that the ancient Indian society comprised numerous racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups and that their beliefs and practices must have influenced the development of Indian religions. It is quite a different matter, however, to attempt to isolate these different strands at any given point in Indian history (Olivelle 1993, 1995b). (New paragraph) It is a much more profitable exercise to study the social, economic, political. and geographical factors along the Gangetic valley during the middle of the first millennium BCE that may have contributed to the growth of ascetic institutions and ideologies (Olivelle 1993, Gombrich 1988). This was a time of radical social and economic change, a period that saw the second urbanization in India —after the initial one over a millennium earlier in the Indus Valley — with large kingdoms, state formation, a surplus economy. and long-distance trade. Ambition, strategy, drive, and risk-taking all played a role in both a king's quest for power and a merchant's pursuit of wealth. A similar spirit of individual enterprise is evident in a person's decision to leave home and family and to become a wandering mendicant. The new social and economic realities of this period surely permitted and even fostered the rise of rival religious ideologies and modes of life. (p. 273)"
 * Quote: "The second half of the first millennium BCE was the period that created many of the ideological and institutional elements that characterize later Indian religions. The renouncer tradition played a central role during this formative period of Indian religious history. Renouncers often formed groups around prominent and charismatic ascetic leaders. Groups that often developed into major religious organizations. Some of them, such as Buddhism and Jainism, survived as major religions; others, such as the Ajīvakas, existed for many centuries before disappearing. Renunciation was at the heart of these religions. (New paragraph) The influence of renouncer practices and ideologies was not limited to what we have come to regard as non-Hindu or "heterodox" traditions: their influence can be seen within the Brahmanical tradition itself. Indeed, during this early period of Indian history the very division into "orthodox" and "heterodox" is anachronistic and presents a distorted historical picture. Scholars in the past have argued that some of the changes within the Brahmanical tradition, such as the creation of the āśrama (orders of life) system. was instituted as a defense mechanism against the onslaught of renunciation. Evidence does not support such claims. The Brahmanical tradition was not a monolithic entity. The debates. controversies, and struggles between the new ideologies and lifestyles of renunciation and the older ritualistic religion took place as much within the Brahmanical tradition as between it and the new religions (Olivelle 1993).  This struggle created new institutions and ideas within that tradition. the āśrama system being one of the more remarkable and enduring. (pp. 273–274)"
 * Quote: "According to the orthodox Brahminical interpretation, it was necessary to be qualified by birth (one had to be a member of one of the three higher classes) and training (one had to have access to the Veda) to be a sacrificer, and the extent and nature of such a man's sacrifices were likewise quite specific, depending upon his depth of initiation and (practically speaking) his wealth. However, according to the more generalized or universal view of sacrifice (that all actions, external and internal, have a sacrificial quality), just as each class has its sva-dharma or inherent duty, which is congruent with dharma at the cosmic level, so each also has its own 'particular sacrifice', which is congruent with the sacrificial nature of existence in general. (Sacrifice and dharma, as we have seen, are part of the same ideological complex.) A potential problem arises, however, in that, with the universalization of sacrifice, every specific action is believed, like every specific sacrifice, to have a specific result. This happens through the law of karma (which, indeed, probably developed out of sacrificial thought): good actions have good results, had actions have had results. (New paragraph) Partly due to the influence of the renouncer movements of Buddhism and Jainism (sacrifice and sacrificial theology are two of the things they are renouncing), violence in particular was thought to bring bad results (although at some level it seems always to have presented problems for sacrificial theology). While Brahminical orthodoxy regarded the violence inherent in sacrifice (in the specifically ritual sense) as justified, or technically not even 'violence' at all, it is less easy to justify the violence of war or battle, of which the Mahābhārata war is the archetype. How will such a conflict not bring bad results for the warriors involved in it? In a general sense, this is the disabling question that overcomes Arjuna in the Bhagawadgīta. The resolution Kṛṣṇa proposes there is, in fact, consonant with the view of the epic in general, namely that the warriors' particular or ascribed `sacrifice' is the 'sacrifice of battle'. War—the violence of battle—is therefore justified because it is sacrificial; that is to say, it accords with dharma, and works ultimately to preserve the cosmic order.  At the individual level, the fruit (the result) of sacrifice is either the enjoyment of the earth (for the victors) or the attainment of heaven (for the vanquished), as Kṛṣṇa points out in the Bhagawadgīta (2.37) (pp xxxv–xxxvii)"
 * Quote: "That the Buddha disparaged extremes of mortification is clear from the Pālī sources, although he had himself practised extreme mortification before his enlightenment. Indeed, these ascetic practices — wandering naked or in rags, barely alive through starvation, living in wild places in all seasons — became part of the narrative of his life and the path to awakening. This distancing from extreme asceticism must be located in the contemporary practice and traditions that formed his context. The Buddha is reacting to both Brahmanical ideas of purity — that purification occurs through ritual bathing for example — and to renouncer groups. At the time of the Buddha, who died around 400 BCE, groups of wandering renouncers (śramaṇalsamaṇa) comprised a number of traditions, the most important of which that survives into the modern world is Jainism. The Jains maintained that all action, both had and good, keeps a being bound in the cycle of reincarnation and suffering. The Jains, like the Buddhists, adhere to the general idea that an action results in an appropriate effect at a later date. For the Jains, action (karman) is a substance that adheres to the moist and sticky soul and liberation is the expunging (nijjarā) of this substance by means of asceticism, thereby allowing the soul, freed from the weight of its actions, to ascend to liberation at the top of the universe. The Jains wished to eradicate former actions through asceticism and not perform new actions. Ascetic behaviour brings the results of action to fruition and, by not creating new karma through minimising interaction with the world, liberation is finally attained. This ideal of non-action for Jain renouncers could culminate in a voluntary, ritual starvation to death (sallekhanā). The Buddha rejected this understanding, .... (p. 120)"
 * Quote: "The śramana traditions From about 800 to 400 CE Sanskrit and Prakrit texts bear witness to the emergence of the new ideology of renunciation, in which knowledge (jñāna) is given precedence over action (karma), and detachment from the material and social world is cultivated through ascetic practices (tapas), celibacy, poverty and methods of mental training (yoga). The purpose of such training is the cultivation of altered or higher states of consciousness which will culminate in the blissful mystical experience of final liberation from the bonds of action and rebirth. While the renouncer of śramaṇa traditions differ on points of doctrine and method, they generally agree that life is characterized by suffering (duḥkha) and adhere to a teaching in which liberation (mokṣa, nirvāna) from suffering is a form of spiritual knowledge or gnosis (jñāna,vidyā). The spread of disease among the new urban population may well have contributed to the growth of ascetic movements and added poignancy to the doctrine of life as suffering. In these new ascetic ideologies, spiritual salvation cannot be attained simply due to a high-caste birth, but only by liberating insight or understanding the nature of existence. The true Brahman, according to the Buddha, is not someone born to a particular mother, but a person whose conduct is pure and mora1. Personal experience in this way is placed above the received knowledge of the vedic revelation. At an early period, during the formation of the Upaniṣads and the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, we must envisage a common heritage of meditation and mental discipline practised by renouncers with varying affiliations to non-orthodox (Veda-rejecting) and orthodox (Veda-accepting) traditions. (p. 81–82)
 * Quote: "These concepts were certainly circulating among the Sramanas, and Jainism and Buddhism developed specific and sophisticated ideas about the process of transmigration. It is very possible that karma and reincarnation entered mainstream brahmanical thought from the sramana or renouncer traditions.  Yet on the other hand, although there is no clear doctrine of transmigration in the vedic hymns,  there is the idea of 'redeath': that a person, having died in this world, might die yet again in the next. Ritual procedures are meant to prevent this eventuality. From the notion of redeath the idea of a return to this world could have developed.   We also have in the Rg Veda the idea that different parts of a person go to different places upon death: the eyes go to the sun, the   breath (atman) to the wind, and the essential 'person' to the ancestors.29 Rebirth into this world could have developed from this partite view of a person.  A third alternative is that the origin of transmigration theory lies outside of vedic or sramana traditions in the tribal religions of the Ganges valley, or even in Dravidian traditions of south India. In the Brhaddranyaka Upaniṣad retributive action first appears to be a secret and little-known doctrine.  Artabhaga questions Yajnavalkya about the fate of a person after death.   Echoing the Ṛg Veda, he asks what becomes of the person after different parts have been dissipated - the eyes to the sun, the breath (atman) to space, the mind to the moon and so on?  Yajnavalkya leads him away to a private place and, warning him not to divulge this doctrine, tells him about karma: that meritorious action leads to merit (puṇya), while evil action leads to further evil (pāpa). Later the text spells out the theory more clearly - that the self (ātman) moves from body to body, as a caterpillar or leech moves from one blade of grass to another.  By the later Upaniṣads the doctrine is firmly established. The Svetasvatara Upanisad (400-200 B c E ), for example, clearly states that the subject, the 'performer of action which bears fruit', wanders in the cycle of transmigration according to his actions (karma).  The origins of renunciation Both brāhmanical and śramana asceticism share a number of common features, which presents a problem in understanding the origins of renunciation.  On the one hand, the ideology of renunciation can be seen as a natural development from vedic ritual traditions; on the other, it can be argued that renunciation comes from outside the vedic tradition. It may, of course, be the case that both theories are accurate in some respects while lacking in others. (p. 86)"
 * Quote: "Jainism emerged, along with Buddhism, towards the end of a time of great social transformation in north India which is usually called the Vedic period after the Veda, the body of literature which in the absence of any large-scale archaeological evidence, forms our main source for this epoch. As Gombrich has provided in his volume on Theravada Buddhism in this series an authoritative account of Vedic India, it will not be necessary to repeat his conclusions in any detail. I will, however, give a brief outline of those aspects of this period which have most bearing upon early Jainism. It has become customary for scholars to interpret the Vedic period as developing in a simple linear fashion. Thus an original nomadic or pastoral life followed from approximately the fifteenth to the tenth centuries BCE by the Aryans, the speakers of the earliest form of that language which was to be called Sanskrit, is usually stated to have been succeeded by the appearance of a more settled, agriculturally on mode of life from about the tenth to the sixth centuries BCE, this being followed in turn, through the generation of significant economic surpluses and the concomitant emergence of new forms of technology such as writing and iron, by urbanisation and the gradual appearance of state formations of varying size. ... The reality was in fact much more complex than such simple linearity of interpretation would suggest. Pastoralism and settled agriculture, for example. must in actuality have functioned together in tandem for some considerable time, while the Upaniśads do not simply represent a more spiritual advance on the Brahmanas but are permeated with the ideology and symbols of the sacrificial ritual. Moreover, the beginning of large-scale urbanisation was in the main located in the east of India, originally regarded by Vedic literature as a marginal and impure region, rather than the more westerly areas which represented the heartland of Vedic culture. Nonetheless, it was both the change attendant upon the shift away from less organised forms of economic life and the influence of Vedic ideology which provided the social and intellectual backdrop against which the two great easterners, Mahavira and his contemporary, the Buddha, moved. The dominant mode of conceptualising, the world in north India by the sixth century BCE was the product of the elaborate speculation conducted by members of the learned brahman caste into the nature and function of ritual. ..."(pp. 13–14)
 * Quote: "Jainism is a collection of traditions stemming from a religious movement which scholars date from approximately the sixth century B.C.E. (based on Buddhist references to a teacher contemporary to Gautama Buddha who appears to be Mahāvīr) or sometimes back to the ninth century B.C.E. (based on some suggestive but inconclusive evidence of a group that sounds like Jains) (Folkert 1993). Jains see Mahāvīr as the most recent of twenty-four enlightened teachers (hereafter, Jinas) who have come to revitalize the Jain faith in this era. Jinas (literally, "victors" over the senses) are understood to have been perfect renouncers—detinitively, human beings—and now transcendent, omniscient souls. Though there are twenty-four Jinas (all of whose names were known by most Jains I encountered), they are not equally prominent. The Jains I knew, the stavan, and the liturgies concerned themselves primarily with Adināth (the first), Ajitnāth (second), Śantināth (sixteenth), Nemināth (twenty-second), Pārśvanāth (twenty-third), and Mahāvīr (twenty-fourth). Although these Jinas are nontransactional-they do not accept offerings or return blessings (Babb 1996)-they are the objects of veneration and temple worship. Jains also worship a few other kinds of beings: guardian deities, such as Padmāvati and Bhairav, who are understood to be lay Jains and therefore grant help to their fellow Jains; miraculous monks who are understood to do much the same (a dominant cultus in the Khartar Gacch); and various I Iindu deities, such as Lakșmi and Ganapati, associated with certain festivals and locations. (p. 8)"
 * Quote: "Scholars usually date the religious movements that are collectively called Jainism from the life of Mahavir, who was teaching in approximately the sixth century BCE, though the historicity of the twenty-third Jina, Parśvanath, is generally accepted. Jains see Mahavir as the most recent of twenty-four enlightened teachers (hereafter, Jinas) who have come to revitalize the Jain faith in this era. Jains describe themselves as a fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The mendicants (monks and nuns) follow a strict regimen of asceticism, more or less modeled on the accounts of the lives of the Jinas and other enlightened beings (siddhas) and the instructions for mendicants—attributed to Mahavir—with the goal of attaining total spiritual release from worldly bonds. Lay Jains are enjoined to support the mendicant orders and to observe a set of religious duties (civaiyaka) that shape their religious practices.'"
 * Quote: "Jainism is Buddhism's lesser-known cousin; although their belief systems are in some ways radically different, they are together the only surviving examples of India's ancient non-Vedic religious traditions. Jainism is above all, and justly, celebrated for its systematic practice of nonviolence (ahiṃsā) and for the rigor of the asceticism it promotes. Jainism is sometimes said to have been founded by Mahavira in the sixth century B.C.E. In reality, however, Jain traditions are much older than this, dating back in all probability to the teachings of Pārśvanāth, who lived in the ninth century B.C.E. Unlike Buddhism, Jainism never (until quite recently) spread beyond India; but also unlike Buddhism, it did not die out in India, and it continues to be an important element in India's contemporary religious life. Although the Jains are relatively few (currently they probably number around four million), many among them enjoy positions of great power and influence in modern Indian society. In northern India the Jains are concentrated mainly in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan; farther south they are found mainly in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Jains, however, live everywhere in India, and significant numbers of Jams also live in Europe and North America. (p.2)"
 * Quote: "Mahavira: The founder of Jainism in this age of the Universe. (p. 297)"
 * Quote: "Third Epoch: Ascetic Reformism (ca. 500–200 BC) The Brahmans did continue to hold a monopoly of sacrifice as the path to salvation, but economic changes allowed the growing criticism of brahmanic mode of sacrifice to assume a previously unknown form: Ascetic reform movements no longer remained limited to a local sphere of influence. Buddhism and Jainism, whose organization was initially hardly distinguished from other ascetic reform movements (e.g., the Ajivakas) are the best examples of that."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "CHAPTER 4 Notes: I. According to Jain traditions, Mahavira lived for seventy-two years, from either 599 BCE to 527 BCE (Svetambara) or 582 BCE to 510 BCE (Digambara). Scholarly estimations of the dates of Mahavira and the Buddha are intertwined, for scholars accept that the former was a slightly older contemporary of the latter. Recent reevaluations of the date of the Buddha, which have moved the dates of the death of Mahavira's younger contemporary from the sixth century BCE to a period between 411 BCE and 400 BCE, logically entail a similar redating of Mahavira's life to the first three-quarters of the fifth century BCE, and his death to sometime around 425 BCE. Dundas has noted, '(t)he Jain community...has not so far proved susceptible to such arguments' and continues to employ its traditional dates (Dundas 2002: 24)." p 311
 * Quote: "The Jain and Vaishnava theologies are not the only ones in South Asia with sets of twenty-four supreme deities (or manifestations of the supreme deity). We also find enumerations of twenty-four Buddhas (in addition to other lists of seven, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-three, fifty-eight). Suzuko Ohira (1994b) has discussed the relative priority of the Jain and Buddhist lists of twenty-four deities. The earliest Buddhist list is found in the Pali Apadana (Glorious Acts), a text dated by scholars variously between the first century BCE and the third—fourth centuries CE. According to her analysis, the Jain lists of the twenty-four Jinas do not date before the fifth century CE, although the concept of there being multiple Jinas is evidenced from both texts and archaeology much earlier. Ohira surmises that the concept of there being just twenty-four Jinas in any given cycle of time was adopted from the Buddhist conception of twenty-four Buddhas. A significant difference between the Buddhist and Jain lists is that whereas the former remained largely a textual list, the latter was translated into practice in the form of temple icons. As Klaus Bruhn (1969: 3) has noted, the Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni retained a position of preeminence in Buddhist cosmology and ritual, especially in Theravada Buddhism, whereas the same was not the case with Mahavira in the Jain context. Many of the other twenty-three Jinas, especially Adinatha (#1), Shantinatha (#16), Neminatha (#22), and Parshvanatha (#23) are important independent deities, and from early in Jain history one finds as many if not more icons of Adinatha, Shantinatha, and Parshvanatha as icons of Mahavira (Cort 2001b: 197). Looking at the relation between concept and cult practice in the different religious settings also points out that none of the twenty-four Emanations of Vishnu attained much significance as an independent deity as evidenced either in narratives or icons. It was several of the ten Descents that became important independent deities. This would perhaps indicate that the Jain list of twenty-four Jinas developed through a theological and ritual process of aggregating some preexisting deities into a larger list of twenty-four (much as the Vaishnava list of Descents resulted from the aggregation of preexisting deities), whereas the Buddhist and Vaishnava lists developed through the intellectual process of creating such lists from scratch, or else expanding from a single deity to a set of twenty-four. While the available material might suggest that the concept of twenty-four deities arose first in Buddhism, then in its fellow shramana tradition Jainism, and finally in Pancharatra Vaishnavism, the evidence does not really allow for us to posit any clear, unidirectional lines of influence or borrowing among these three theologies. At present all that we can say is that all three of these closely related theological and liturgical traditions developed polytheisms that saw divinity as simultaneously singular and plural, one and twenty-four. In none of these traditions does the conception of there being twenty-four mani-festations of divinity lead to full-blown personalities of all twenty-four, nor do they develop individualized iconographies. (pp 214–215)"
 * Quote: "This vision is encapsulated in the history of the enlightened teachers and saviors of Jainism, the Jinas. Within the two periods of each half cycle of time when moral choice and therefore liberation are possible on Bhārata, twenty-four individuals are born who through their own correct faith, knowledge, and conduct overcome the bonds of karma and become enlightened and, at the end of their bodily lives, attain liberation. These twenty-four, because of special actions in previous lives that generated an exceedingly refined kind of karma, are also teachers and founders of the Jain religious tradition. They are known as Jinas, "Conquerors," because they conquer the bonds of karma. They are also known as Tīrthakaras, because they establish (kara) the ford (tīrtha) to cross the river of rebirth to liberation, and because they establish the four estates (tīrtha) of the Jain community: the male mendicants (sādhu), female mendicants (sādhvī), laymen (śrāvaka), and laywomen (śrāvaka). The first Jina in this era was Ṛșabhanātha, also known as Ādinātha (First Lord). His biography makes of him something of a culture creator (Jaini 1977). Other important Jinas of the Jain universal history were the sixteenth, Śāntinātha (popular as a cultic figure in large part for emblematic reasons because of his name, "Peace Lord"), and the last three, successively Neminātha, Pārśvanātha, and Vardhamāna Mahavīra. According to the Jains, Neminātha lived in Saurashtra in western India and was a cousin of Kṛșṇa (Krishna); Pārśvanātha lived in the eighth century B.C.E. in Banaras; and Mahavira lived a little over 2,500 years ago in what is today the state of Bihar in northern India.  Shortly after the death and liberation of Mahavīra, the wheel of time rolled into the fifth spoke of time, and so liberation is no longer possible on Bhārata, although we live close enough to the time of Mahavira that some moral choice and therefore some religious life is still possible. The Jain pantheon, the focus of Jain devotion, is divided into two distinctly different types of beings. On the one hand are the Jinas (and all other liberated souls), the exemplars of the religion. According to Jains, liberated souls are vītarāga or freed of all desire. This means they have overcome all desires, even the desire to act (and all action, reason the Jains, is preceded by a desire to act). As a result the liberated souls do not interact in any way with individuals on earth. The Jinas collectively are the God of the Jains. Jainism is often characterized by both scholars and non-Jain ideologues as atheistic or nontheistic. This is inaccurate, however, and is strenuously denied by Jains. Jains reject the definition of God as the creator of the universe, found in many Hindu and Abrahamic theologies, but they do not reject the concept of God. They use many of the same terms used by Hindus, such as Bhagavān, Deva, Īśvara, Paramātmā, and Parameśvara. According to Jains, as we have seen above, the universe is eternal; as Jains frequently say, it has existed from beginningless time to endless time. God, therefore, has nothing to do with creation of the universe. Instead, Jains define as God any soul who has become liberated, and in particular those souls who were also the teachers and founders of Jainism, the Jinas or Tirthankaras. Each of these souls exists in identical perfection, and so is indistinguishable from any other such soul. Due to this identity of perfection, God for the Jains can be understood as singular. Because there are many liberated souls, God can also be understood as plural. (pp. 22–23)"
 * Quote: "The bulk of the book will revolve around the origins and ideas of the world's major living religions of the eastern half ... In India, we will find four major faiths of varying degrees of antiquity: the very ancient ... Hinduism, then the contemporary reform movements of the enormously popular Buddhism, together with the somewhat more ascetical Jainism, ...."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."
 * Quote: "Scholars usually date the religious movements that are collectively called Jainism from the life of Mahavir, who was teaching in approximately the sixth century BCE, though the historicity of the twenty-third Jina, Parśvanath, is generally accepted. Jains see Mahavir as the most recent of twenty-four enlightened teachers (hereafter, Jinas) who have come to revitalize the Jain faith in this era. Jains describe themselves as a fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The mendicants (monks and nuns) follow a strict regimen of asceticism, more or less modeled on the accounts of the lives of the Jinas and other enlightened beings (siddhas) and the instructions for mendicants—attributed to Mahavir—with the goal of attaining total spiritual release from worldly bonds. Lay Jains are enjoined to support the mendicant orders and to observe a set of religious duties (civaiyaka) that shape their religious practices.'"
 * Quote: "Jainism is Buddhism's lesser-known cousin; although their belief systems are in some ways radically different, they are together the only surviving examples of India's ancient non-Vedic religious traditions. Jainism is above all, and justly, celebrated for its systematic practice of nonviolence (ahiṃsā) and for the rigor of the asceticism it promotes. Jainism is sometimes said to have been founded by Mahavira in the sixth century B.C.E. In reality, however, Jain traditions are much older than this, dating back in all probability to the teachings of Pārśvanāth, who lived in the ninth century B.C.E. Unlike Buddhism, Jainism never (until quite recently) spread beyond India; but also unlike Buddhism, it did not die out in India, and it continues to be an important element in India's contemporary religious life. Although the Jains are relatively few (currently they probably number around four million), many among them enjoy positions of great power and influence in modern Indian society. In northern India the Jains are concentrated mainly in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan; farther south they are found mainly in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Jains, however, live everywhere in India, and significant numbers of Jams also live in Europe and North America. (p.2)"
 * Quote: "Mahavira: The founder of Jainism in this age of the Universe. (p. 297)"
 * Quote: "Third Epoch: Ascetic Reformism (ca. 500–200 BC) The Brahmans did continue to hold a monopoly of sacrifice as the path to salvation, but economic changes allowed the growing criticism of brahmanic mode of sacrifice to assume a previously unknown form: Ascetic reform movements no longer remained limited to a local sphere of influence. Buddhism and Jainism, whose organization was initially hardly distinguished from other ascetic reform movements (e.g., the Ajivakas) are the best examples of that."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "CHAPTER 4 Notes: I. According to Jain traditions, Mahavira lived for seventy-two years, from either 599 BCE to 527 BCE (Svetambara) or 582 BCE to 510 BCE (Digambara). Scholarly estimations of the dates of Mahavira and the Buddha are intertwined, for scholars accept that the former was a slightly older contemporary of the latter. Recent reevaluations of the date of the Buddha, which have moved the dates of the death of Mahavira's younger contemporary from the sixth century BCE to a period between 411 BCE and 400 BCE, logically entail a similar redating of Mahavira's life to the first three-quarters of the fifth century BCE, and his death to sometime around 425 BCE. Dundas has noted, '(t)he Jain community...has not so far proved susceptible to such arguments' and continues to employ its traditional dates (Dundas 2002: 24)." p 311
 * Quote: "The Jain and Vaishnava theologies are not the only ones in South Asia with sets of twenty-four supreme deities (or manifestations of the supreme deity). We also find enumerations of twenty-four Buddhas (in addition to other lists of seven, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-three, fifty-eight). Suzuko Ohira (1994b) has discussed the relative priority of the Jain and Buddhist lists of twenty-four deities. The earliest Buddhist list is found in the Pali Apadana (Glorious Acts), a text dated by scholars variously between the first century BCE and the third—fourth centuries CE. According to her analysis, the Jain lists of the twenty-four Jinas do not date before the fifth century CE, although the concept of there being multiple Jinas is evidenced from both texts and archaeology much earlier. Ohira surmises that the concept of there being just twenty-four Jinas in any given cycle of time was adopted from the Buddhist conception of twenty-four Buddhas. A significant difference between the Buddhist and Jain lists is that whereas the former remained largely a textual list, the latter was translated into practice in the form of temple icons. As Klaus Bruhn (1969: 3) has noted, the Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni retained a position of preeminence in Buddhist cosmology and ritual, especially in Theravada Buddhism, whereas the same was not the case with Mahavira in the Jain context. Many of the other twenty-three Jinas, especially Adinatha (#1), Shantinatha (#16), Neminatha (#22), and Parshvanatha (#23) are important independent deities, and from early in Jain history one finds as many if not more icons of Adinatha, Shantinatha, and Parshvanatha as icons of Mahavira (Cort 2001b: 197). Looking at the relation between concept and cult practice in the different religious settings also points out that none of the twenty-four Emanations of Vishnu attained much significance as an independent deity as evidenced either in narratives or icons. It was several of the ten Descents that became important independent deities. This would perhaps indicate that the Jain list of twenty-four Jinas developed through a theological and ritual process of aggregating some preexisting deities into a larger list of twenty-four (much as the Vaishnava list of Descents resulted from the aggregation of preexisting deities), whereas the Buddhist and Vaishnava lists developed through the intellectual process of creating such lists from scratch, or else expanding from a single deity to a set of twenty-four. While the available material might suggest that the concept of twenty-four deities arose first in Buddhism, then in its fellow shramana tradition Jainism, and finally in Pancharatra Vaishnavism, the evidence does not really allow for us to posit any clear, unidirectional lines of influence or borrowing among these three theologies. At present all that we can say is that all three of these closely related theological and liturgical traditions developed polytheisms that saw divinity as simultaneously singular and plural, one and twenty-four. In none of these traditions does the conception of there being twenty-four mani-festations of divinity lead to full-blown personalities of all twenty-four, nor do they develop individualized iconographies. (pp 214–215)"
 * Quote: "This vision is encapsulated in the history of the enlightened teachers and saviors of Jainism, the Jinas. Within the two periods of each half cycle of time when moral choice and therefore liberation are possible on Bhārata, twenty-four individuals are born who through their own correct faith, knowledge, and conduct overcome the bonds of karma and become enlightened and, at the end of their bodily lives, attain liberation. These twenty-four, because of special actions in previous lives that generated an exceedingly refined kind of karma, are also teachers and founders of the Jain religious tradition. They are known as Jinas, "Conquerors," because they conquer the bonds of karma. They are also known as Tīrthakaras, because they establish (kara) the ford (tīrtha) to cross the river of rebirth to liberation, and because they establish the four estates (tīrtha) of the Jain community: the male mendicants (sādhu), female mendicants (sādhvī), laymen (śrāvaka), and laywomen (śrāvaka). The first Jina in this era was Ṛșabhanātha, also known as Ādinātha (First Lord). His biography makes of him something of a culture creator (Jaini 1977). Other important Jinas of the Jain universal history were the sixteenth, Śāntinātha (popular as a cultic figure in large part for emblematic reasons because of his name, "Peace Lord"), and the last three, successively Neminātha, Pārśvanātha, and Vardhamāna Mahavīra. According to the Jains, Neminātha lived in Saurashtra in western India and was a cousin of Kṛșṇa (Krishna); Pārśvanātha lived in the eighth century B.C.E. in Banaras; and Mahavira lived a little over 2,500 years ago in what is today the state of Bihar in northern India.  Shortly after the death and liberation of Mahavīra, the wheel of time rolled into the fifth spoke of time, and so liberation is no longer possible on Bhārata, although we live close enough to the time of Mahavira that some moral choice and therefore some religious life is still possible. The Jain pantheon, the focus of Jain devotion, is divided into two distinctly different types of beings. On the one hand are the Jinas (and all other liberated souls), the exemplars of the religion. According to Jains, liberated souls are vītarāga or freed of all desire. This means they have overcome all desires, even the desire to act (and all action, reason the Jains, is preceded by a desire to act). As a result the liberated souls do not interact in any way with individuals on earth. The Jinas collectively are the God of the Jains. Jainism is often characterized by both scholars and non-Jain ideologues as atheistic or nontheistic. This is inaccurate, however, and is strenuously denied by Jains. Jains reject the definition of God as the creator of the universe, found in many Hindu and Abrahamic theologies, but they do not reject the concept of God. They use many of the same terms used by Hindus, such as Bhagavān, Deva, Īśvara, Paramātmā, and Parameśvara. According to Jains, as we have seen above, the universe is eternal; as Jains frequently say, it has existed from beginningless time to endless time. God, therefore, has nothing to do with creation of the universe. Instead, Jains define as God any soul who has become liberated, and in particular those souls who were also the teachers and founders of Jainism, the Jinas or Tirthankaras. Each of these souls exists in identical perfection, and so is indistinguishable from any other such soul. Due to this identity of perfection, God for the Jains can be understood as singular. Because there are many liberated souls, God can also be understood as plural. (pp. 22–23)"
 * Quote: "The bulk of the book will revolve around the origins and ideas of the world's major living religions of the eastern half ... In India, we will find four major faiths of varying degrees of antiquity: the very ancient ... Hinduism, then the contemporary reform movements of the enormously popular Buddhism, together with the somewhat more ascetical Jainism, ...."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."
 * Quote: "The Jain and Vaishnava theologies are not the only ones in South Asia with sets of twenty-four supreme deities (or manifestations of the supreme deity). We also find enumerations of twenty-four Buddhas (in addition to other lists of seven, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-three, fifty-eight). Suzuko Ohira (1994b) has discussed the relative priority of the Jain and Buddhist lists of twenty-four deities. The earliest Buddhist list is found in the Pali Apadana (Glorious Acts), a text dated by scholars variously between the first century BCE and the third—fourth centuries CE. According to her analysis, the Jain lists of the twenty-four Jinas do not date before the fifth century CE, although the concept of there being multiple Jinas is evidenced from both texts and archaeology much earlier. Ohira surmises that the concept of there being just twenty-four Jinas in any given cycle of time was adopted from the Buddhist conception of twenty-four Buddhas. A significant difference between the Buddhist and Jain lists is that whereas the former remained largely a textual list, the latter was translated into practice in the form of temple icons. As Klaus Bruhn (1969: 3) has noted, the Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni retained a position of preeminence in Buddhist cosmology and ritual, especially in Theravada Buddhism, whereas the same was not the case with Mahavira in the Jain context. Many of the other twenty-three Jinas, especially Adinatha (#1), Shantinatha (#16), Neminatha (#22), and Parshvanatha (#23) are important independent deities, and from early in Jain history one finds as many if not more icons of Adinatha, Shantinatha, and Parshvanatha as icons of Mahavira (Cort 2001b: 197). Looking at the relation between concept and cult practice in the different religious settings also points out that none of the twenty-four Emanations of Vishnu attained much significance as an independent deity as evidenced either in narratives or icons. It was several of the ten Descents that became important independent deities. This would perhaps indicate that the Jain list of twenty-four Jinas developed through a theological and ritual process of aggregating some preexisting deities into a larger list of twenty-four (much as the Vaishnava list of Descents resulted from the aggregation of preexisting deities), whereas the Buddhist and Vaishnava lists developed through the intellectual process of creating such lists from scratch, or else expanding from a single deity to a set of twenty-four. While the available material might suggest that the concept of twenty-four deities arose first in Buddhism, then in its fellow shramana tradition Jainism, and finally in Pancharatra Vaishnavism, the evidence does not really allow for us to posit any clear, unidirectional lines of influence or borrowing among these three theologies. At present all that we can say is that all three of these closely related theological and liturgical traditions developed polytheisms that saw divinity as simultaneously singular and plural, one and twenty-four. In none of these traditions does the conception of there being twenty-four mani-festations of divinity lead to full-blown personalities of all twenty-four, nor do they develop individualized iconographies. (pp 214–215)"
 * Quote: "This vision is encapsulated in the history of the enlightened teachers and saviors of Jainism, the Jinas. Within the two periods of each half cycle of time when moral choice and therefore liberation are possible on Bhārata, twenty-four individuals are born who through their own correct faith, knowledge, and conduct overcome the bonds of karma and become enlightened and, at the end of their bodily lives, attain liberation. These twenty-four, because of special actions in previous lives that generated an exceedingly refined kind of karma, are also teachers and founders of the Jain religious tradition. They are known as Jinas, "Conquerors," because they conquer the bonds of karma. They are also known as Tīrthakaras, because they establish (kara) the ford (tīrtha) to cross the river of rebirth to liberation, and because they establish the four estates (tīrtha) of the Jain community: the male mendicants (sādhu), female mendicants (sādhvī), laymen (śrāvaka), and laywomen (śrāvaka). The first Jina in this era was Ṛșabhanātha, also known as Ādinātha (First Lord). His biography makes of him something of a culture creator (Jaini 1977). Other important Jinas of the Jain universal history were the sixteenth, Śāntinātha (popular as a cultic figure in large part for emblematic reasons because of his name, "Peace Lord"), and the last three, successively Neminātha, Pārśvanātha, and Vardhamāna Mahavīra. According to the Jains, Neminātha lived in Saurashtra in western India and was a cousin of Kṛșṇa (Krishna); Pārśvanātha lived in the eighth century B.C.E. in Banaras; and Mahavira lived a little over 2,500 years ago in what is today the state of Bihar in northern India.  Shortly after the death and liberation of Mahavīra, the wheel of time rolled into the fifth spoke of time, and so liberation is no longer possible on Bhārata, although we live close enough to the time of Mahavira that some moral choice and therefore some religious life is still possible. The Jain pantheon, the focus of Jain devotion, is divided into two distinctly different types of beings. On the one hand are the Jinas (and all other liberated souls), the exemplars of the religion. According to Jains, liberated souls are vītarāga or freed of all desire. This means they have overcome all desires, even the desire to act (and all action, reason the Jains, is preceded by a desire to act). As a result the liberated souls do not interact in any way with individuals on earth. The Jinas collectively are the God of the Jains. Jainism is often characterized by both scholars and non-Jain ideologues as atheistic or nontheistic. This is inaccurate, however, and is strenuously denied by Jains. Jains reject the definition of God as the creator of the universe, found in many Hindu and Abrahamic theologies, but they do not reject the concept of God. They use many of the same terms used by Hindus, such as Bhagavān, Deva, Īśvara, Paramātmā, and Parameśvara. According to Jains, as we have seen above, the universe is eternal; as Jains frequently say, it has existed from beginningless time to endless time. God, therefore, has nothing to do with creation of the universe. Instead, Jains define as God any soul who has become liberated, and in particular those souls who were also the teachers and founders of Jainism, the Jinas or Tirthankaras. Each of these souls exists in identical perfection, and so is indistinguishable from any other such soul. Due to this identity of perfection, God for the Jains can be understood as singular. Because there are many liberated souls, God can also be understood as plural. (pp. 22–23)"
 * Quote: "The bulk of the book will revolve around the origins and ideas of the world's major living religions of the eastern half ... In India, we will find four major faiths of varying degrees of antiquity: the very ancient ... Hinduism, then the contemporary reform movements of the enormously popular Buddhism, together with the somewhat more ascetical Jainism, ...."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."
 * Quote: "Jainism and Buddhism sprang from early Hinduism as reform movements."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."
 * Quote: "The Buddhists and the Jainas considered their religious reform movements as the Aryan way and rejected the Vedic Way, as they did not accept the Veda as their sacred scripture."

Select Reliable Tertiary Sources

 * Quote: "Scholars of religion generally hold that Jainism originated in the 7th–5th century BCE in the Ganges basin of eastern India, the scene of intense religious speculation and activity at that time. Buddhism also appeared in this region, as did other belief systems that renounced the world and opposed the ritualistic Brahmanic schools whose prestige derived from their claim of purity and their ability to perform the traditional rituals and sacrifices and to interpret their meaning."
 * Quote: "a non-theistic religion founded in India in the 6th century BC by the Jina Vardhamana Mahavira as a reaction against the teachings of orthodox Brahmanism, and still practised there. The Jain religion teaches salvation by perfection through successive lives, and non-injury to living creatures, and is noted for its ascetics."
 * (subscription might be required)
 * Quote: "Religion of India established between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. It was founded by Vardhamana, who was called Mahavira, as a reaction against the Vedic religion, which required animal sacrifices. Jainism's core belief is ahimsa, or noninjury to all living things. Jainism has no belief in a creator god, though there are a number of lesser deities for various aspects of life."
 * (subscription might be required)
 * Quote: "Religion of India established between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. It was founded by Vardhamana, who was called Mahavira, as a reaction against the Vedic religion, which required animal sacrifices. Jainism's core belief is ahimsa, or noninjury to all living things. Jainism has no belief in a creator god, though there are a number of lesser deities for various aspects of life."

Consensus achieved 13 September 2013
Consensus was achieved on 13 September 2013 (see here) for the following revision: "The emerging urbanisation and the orthodoxies of this age also created heterodox religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle class; chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. Jainism came into prominence during the life of its exemplar, Mahavira. In an age of increasing urban wealth, both religions held up renunciation as an ideal, and both established long-lasting monastic traditions."