Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 22.djvu/14

x GAINA SUTRAS. have grown out of, or branched off from the other. This â priori opinion has prejudiced the discernment of many critics, and still does so. In the following pages I shall try to destroy this prejudice, and to vindicate that authority and credit of the sacred books of the Gainas to which they are entitled. We begin our discussion with an inquiry about Mahâvîra, the founder or, at least, the last prophet of the Gaina church. It will be seen that enough is known of him to invalidate the suspicion that he is a sort of mystical person, invented or set up by a younger sect some centuries after the pretended age of their assumed founder.

The Gainas, both Svetâmbaras and Digambaras, state that Mahâvîra was the son of king Siddhârtha of Kundapura or Kundagrâma. They would have us believe that Kundagrâma was a large town, and Siddhârtha a powerful monarch. But they have misrepresented the matter in overrating the real state of things, just as the Buddhists did with regard to Kapilavastu and Suddhodana. For Kundagrâma is called in the Âkârâṅga Sûtra a samnivesa, a term which the commentator interprets as denoting a halting-place of caravans or processions. It must therefore have been an insignificant place, of which tradition has only recorded that it lay in Videha (Âkârâṅga Sûtra II, 15, § 17). Yet by combining occasional hints in the Bauddha and Gaina scriptures we can, with sufficient accuracy, point out where the birthplace of Mahâvîra was situated; for in the Mahâvagga of the Buddhists we read that Buddha, while sojourning at Kotiggâma, was visited by the courtezan Ambapâli and the Likkhavis of the neighbouring capital Vesâli. From Kotiggâma he went to where the Ñâtikas (lived). There he lodged in the Ñâtika Brick-hall, in the neighbourhood of which place the courtezan