The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c5.23

c5.23

§ 3. JACOBI'S introduction to the Kalpasūtra has come to be fundamental for all further research. This research has been described up to the twenties of this century by WINDISCH and need not be repeated here². Its starting point was, due to JACOBI³, the definite removal of any doubt whether the Jains or the Buddhists were of earlier origin⁴, a doubt resulting from some inward and outward similarities between those two world-denying religions. Jain creed had sprung into existence long before Gautama Buddha's time, Vardhamāna Mahāvīra was not its founder, but a reformer of what-Pārśva had taught, whom tradition credibly maintains to have lived 250 years before him. It may be added here from a later deduction of JACOBI'S that Mahāvīra's Nirvāna was in 477 B.C. As we know from Pali sources, he was a contemporary of Gautama and is likely to have survived him by seven years⁵.