The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c18.52

v1.c18.52

At the end of the famine the emigrants returned, but at this time Bhadrabāhu seems to have laid down his leadership of the church, and to have retired to Nepāl in order to pass the remainder of his life in penance, leaving the succession to Sthūlabhadra. There is no reason to believe the account given by the Digambaras, according to which he was murdered by his own disciples. But, in any case, this time seems to have been one of misfortune for the Jain church; and there can be no doubt it was then, i.e. about 300 B.C., that the great schism originated, which has ever since divided the community in two great sects, the Çvetāmbaras and the Digambaras. The returning monks, who had during the famine strictly observed the rules in all their severity, were discontented with the conduct of the brethren who had remained in Magadha, and stigmatised them as heretics of wrong faith and lax discipline. Moreover, during this time of dissolution, the old canon had fallen into oblivion; and consequently the monks who had remained in Magadha convoked a great council at Pāṭaliputra, the modern Patna, in order to collect and revise the scriptures. However, this proved to be an undertaking of extraordinary difficulty, since the *pūrvas* or older parts were known perfectly only to Bhadrabāhu, who had at this time already settled in Nepāl; and Sthūlabhadra, who went there in person, although he learnt from his predecessor all the fourteen *pūrvas*, was forbidden to teach more than the first ten of them to others. The canon established by the Council was therefore a fragmentary one; and in it, to some extent, new scriptures took the place of the old. In some degree it may be represented by the present canon of the Çvetāmbaras, since that too is preserved in a somewhat disorderly condition. The returning monks, the spiritual ancestors of the Digambaras, seem to have taken no part in the council, and to have proclaimed that the real canon had been hopelessly lost; and even to the present day they have continued to hold the same opinion. They regard the whole canon of the Çvetāmbaras, the Siddhānta as it is called, as merely a late and unauthoritative collection of works, brought together by Jinachandra in Valabhī at a far later date.