A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c7.56

c7.56

The cognate and yet fundamentally distinct religion of the Jains may be more briefly dismissed.² The saint named Mahāvīra occupies in Jain estimation a position similar to that which Gautama Buddha holds among the Buddhists, and was contemporary with him for some years. Mahāvīra, however, does not seem to have exercised personal magnetism equal to that of his rival. Jain veneration is still shared by Mahāvīra with his predecessors, whereas Buddhists have long ceased to trouble themselves about the 'former Buddhas'. Like the Buddhists, the Jains had a monastic organization, but it never attained power equal to that of the Buddhist Order. The Jains, who still number considerably more than a million in India, belong for the most part to the mercantile castes and reside chiefly in Rājputāna and the Western provinces. Their religion has thus shown more tenacious vitality within the limits of India than Buddhism, which died out in the land of its birth many centuries ago. On the other hand, the Jains have exhibited little missionary zeal, and their creed never made any considerable conquests outside of India. In the early centuries of the Christian era they were far more influential than they are now, and in the South their religion appears to have been at one time, perhaps even predominant. In ancient times they venerated relics and erected *stūpas* for their custody exactly in the same way as the Buddhists did, and we know accurately from the Mathurā relief sculptures what their *stūpas* were like, but, so far as I am aware, no monument of that class now standing has been recognized as Jain.