The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c18.6

v1.c18.6

The *Arthaçāstra* or 'Manual of Politics' which may possibly be the real work of Chāṇakya or Kauṭilya, and therefore written about 300 b.c.², describes in the following words the life of a *parivrājaka*: '(the duties) of an ascetic (consist in) subduing his senses, withdrawal from worldly things and from communication with people, begging for alms, living in the forests, but not in the same place, cleanliness external and internal, abstinence from injury to living beings, and in sincerity, purity, freedom from envy, in kindness and in patience³.' These general rules could—perhaps with one slight alteration—as well be found in any Jain work, and in fact we do find them in many passages of the Jain canon, although perhaps not exactly in the same words. But the similarity between the life of a Brāhman and a Jain ascetic goes much further, and often extends to the most trifling rules of discipline as has been shown by Professor Jacobi from a comparison of the rules laid down for Jain monks and for Brāhman mendicants⁴. Evidently there is not the slightest reason for regarding either the Jains or the Buddhists as innovators in these matters; and the following pages will show that it was in doctrine rather than in life, in the attempt to abolish the authority of the Brāhman scriptures and the rites of sacrifice rather than in any effort to change the social institutions and conditions of his time, that Mahāvīra differed more widely from his Brāhman predecessors. And when both he and his great rival, Buddha, state that a man is not merely born a Brāhman, but becomes a Brāhman through his meritorious actions, they seem not even here to be real innovators; for we are immediately reminded of the legend of Satyakāma Jābāla and other similar instances¹, that seem to prove that birth was not always regarded as the true keynote of sanctity even in orthodox circles. Jainism, as well as Buddhism, is certainly to be viewed only in close connexion with the Brāhman institutions existing at the time of its rise; and from this standpoint we may now enter upon a closer investigation of the subject of this chapter, the origin and first development of the Jain church.