Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/143

Rh exhaustive biography in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xiii.; see also J. Vahlen, Otto Jahn (1870); C. Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland.

JAHRUM, a town and district of Persia in the province of Fars, S.E. of Shiraz and S.W. of Darab. The district has thirty-three villages and is famous for its celebrated sháhán dates, which are exported in great quantities; it also produces much tobacco and fruit. The water supply is scanty, and most of the irrigation is by water drawn from wells. The town of Jahrum, situated about 90 m. S.E. of Shiraz, is surrounded by a mud-wall 3 m. in circuit which was constructed in 1834. It has a population of about 15,000, one half living inside and the other half outside the walls. It is the market for the produce of the surrounding districts, has six caravanserais and a post office.

 JAINS, the most numerous and influential sect of heretics, or nonconformists to the Brahmanical system of Hinduism, in India. They are found in every province of upper Hindustan, in the cities along the Ganges and in Calcutta. But they are more numerous to the west—in Mewar, Gujarat, and in the upper part of the Malabar coast—and are also scattered throughout the whole of the southern peninsula. They are mostly traders, and live in the towns; and the wealth of many of their community gives them a social importance greater than would result from their mere numbers. In the Indian census of 1901 they are returned as being 1,334,140 in number. Their magnificent series of temples and shrines on Mount Abu, one of the seven wonders of India, is perhaps the most striking outward sign of their wealth and importance.

The Jains are the last direct representatives on the continent of India of those schools of thought which grew out of the active philosophical speculation and earnest spirit of religious inquiry that prevailed in the valley of the Ganges during the 5th and 6th centuries before the Christian era. For many centuries Jainism was so overshadowed by that stupendous movement, born at the same time and in the same place, which we call Buddhism, that it remained almost unnoticed by the side of its powerful rival. But when Buddhism, whose widely open doors had absorbed the mass of the community, became thereby corrupted from its pristine purity and gradually died away, the smaller school of the Jains, less diametrically opposed to the victorious orthodox creed of the Brahmans, survived, and in some degree took its place.

Jainism purports to be the system of belief promulgated by Vaddhamāna, better known by his epithet of Mahā-vīra (the great hero), who was a contemporary of Gotama, the Buddha. But the Jains, like the Buddhists, believe that the same system had previously been proclaimed through countless ages by each one of a succession of earlier teachers. The Jains count twenty-four such prophets, whom they call Jinas, or Tīrthankaras, that is, conquerors or leaders of schools of thought. It is from this word Jina that the modern name Jainas, meaning followers of the Jina, or of the Jinas, is derived. This legend of the twenty-four Jinas contains a germ of truth. Mahā-vīra was not an originator; he merely carried on, with but slight changes, a system which existed before his time, and which probably owes its most distinguishing features to a teacher named Pārṣwa, who ranks in the succession of Jinas as the predecessor of Mahā-vīra. Pārṣwa is said, in the Jain chronology, to have been born two hundred years before Mahā-vīra (that is, about 760 ); but the only conclusion that it is safe to draw from this statement is that Pārṣwa was considerably earlier in point of time than Mahā-vīra. Very little reliance can be placed upon the details reported in the Jain books concerning the previous Jinas in the list of the twenty-four Tīrthankaras. The curious will find in them many reminiscences of Hindu and Buddhist legend; and the antiquary must notice the distinctive symbols assigned to each, in order to recognize the statues of the different Jinas, otherwise identical, in the different Jain temples.

The Jains are divided into two great parties—the Digambaras, or Sky-clad Ones, and the Svetāmbaras, or the White-robed Ones. The latter have only as yet been traced, and that doubtfully, as far back as the 5th century after Christ; the former are almost certainly the same as the Nigaṇṭhas, who are referred to in numerous passages of the Buddhist Pāli Piṭakas, and must therefore be at least as old as the 6th century In many of these passages the Nigaṇṭhas are mentioned as contemporaneous with the Buddha; and details enough are given concerning their leader Nigaṇṭha Nāta-putta (that is, the Nigaṇṭha of the Jñātṛika clan) to enable us to identify him, without any doubt, as the same person as the Vaddhamāna Mahā-vīra of the Jain books. This remarkable confirmation, from the scriptures of a rival religion, of the Jain tradition is conclusive as to the date of Mahā-vīra. The Nigaṇṭhas are referred to in one of Asoka’s edicts (Corpus Inscriptionum, Plate xx.). Unfortunately the account of the teachings of Nigaṇṭha Nāta-putta given in the Buddhist scriptures are, like those of the Buddha’s teachings given in the Brahmanical literature, very meagre.

Jain Literature.—The Jain scriptures themselves, though based on earlier traditions, are not older in their present form than the 5th century of our era. The most distinctively sacred books are called the forty-five Āgamas, consisting of eleven Angas, twelve Upangas, ten Pakiṇṇakas, six Chedas, four Mūla-sūtras and two other books. Devaddhi Gaṇin, who occupies among the Jains a position very similar to that occupied among the Buddhists by Buddhaghosa, collected the then existing traditions and teachings of the sect into these forty-five Āgamas. Like the Buddhist scriptures, the earlier Jain books are written in a dialect of their own, the so-called Jaina Prākrit; and it was not till between 1000 and 1100 that the Jains adopted Sanskrit as their literary language. Considerable progress has been made in the publication and elucidation of these original authorities. But a great deal remains yet to be done. The oldest books now in the possession of the modern Jains purport to go back, not to the foundation of the existing order in the 6th century, but only to the time of Bhadrabahu, three centuries later. The whole of the still older literature, on which the revision then made was based, the so-called Pūrvas, have been lost. And the existing canonical books, while preserving a great deal that was probably derived from them, contain much later material. The problem remains to sort out the older from the later, to distinguish between the earlier form of the faith and its subsequent developments, and to collect the numerous data for the general, social, industrial, religious and political history of India. Professor Weber gave a fairly full and carefully-drawn-up analysis of the whole of the more ancient books in the second part of the second volume of his ''Catalogue of the Sanskrit MSS. at Berlin'', published in 1888, and in vols. xvi. and xvii. of his Indische Studien. An English translation of these last was published first in the Indian Antiquary, and then separately at Bombay, 1893. Professor Bhandarkar gave an account of the contents of many later works in his Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS., Bombay, 1883. Only a small beginning has been made in editing and translating these works. The best précis of a long book can necessarily only deal with the more important features in it. And in the choice of what should be included the précis-writer will often omit the points some subsequent investigator may most especially want. All the older works ought therefore to be edited and translated in full and properly indexed. The Jains themselves have now printed in Bombay a complete edition of their sacred books. But the critical value of this edition, and of other editions of separate texts printed elsewhere in India, leaves much to be desired. Professor Jacobi has edited and translated the Kalpa Sūtra, containing a life of the founder of the Jain order; but this can scarcely be older than the 5th century of our era. He has also edited and translated the Āyāranya Sutta of the Svetambara Jains. The text, published by the Pali Text Society, is of 140 pages octavo. The first part of it, about 50 pages, is a very old document on the Jain views as to conduct, and the remainder consists of appendices, added at different times, on the same subject. The older part may go back as early as the 3rd century, and it sets out more especially the Jain doctrine of tapas or self-mortification, in contradistinction to the Buddhist view, which condemned asceticism. The rules of conduct in this book are for members of the order. Dr Rudolf Hoernle edited and translated an ancient work on the rules of conduct for laymen, the Uvāsaga Dasāo. Professor Leumann edited another of the older works, the Aupapātika Sūtra, and a fourth, entitled the Dasa-vaikālika Sātra, both of them published by the German Oriental Society. Professor Jacobi translated two more, the Uttarādhyāyana and the Sūtra Kritānga. Finally Dr Barnett has translated two others in vol. xvii. of the Oriental Translation Fund (new series, London, 1907). Thus about one-fiftieth part of these interesting and valuable old records is now accessible to the European scholar. The sect of the Svetambaras has preserved the oldest literatures. Dr Hoernle has treated of the early history of