Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/388

326 the mention of "Nataputra" and of the "Nirgranthas" in the Buddhist scriptures, it is reasonable to suppose that the Jain sect of unclad ascetics also had its origin about the same time. Indeed, we have already stated repeatedly that various sects of ascetics lived in India at the time when Gautama Buddha lived and taught and led his sect of ascetics. It is difficult to believe, however, that the Jain religion, as we have it now, was professed by the Nirgranthas of the sixth century The story that the canon was settled by a council in Magadha at the tune of Chandragupta is probably a myth; and even if the legend be true, the canon settled in the third century  would be very different from that recorded in the fifth century  For there can be little doubt that the early tenets of the first Nirgranthas had long since been modified and completely transformed, and that the more cultured section of that body, who adopted a white garment, borrowed their maxims and precepts, their rules and customs, their legends and traditions, from Buddhism, which was the prevailing religion of India after the third century  Thus the Jains drifted more and more towards Buddhism for long centuries, until they had adopted the substance of the Buddhist religion as their own, and very little of the early tenets of the unclad Nirgranthas was left. It was then, in the fifth century, that their scriptures were committed to writing, and it is no wonder that those sacred texts read like a copy of the Buddhist scriptures made six centuries before.