Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 22.djvu/39

 same number of prophets believed to have risen since the creation of the present order of things, the former worshipping twenty-four Tîrthakaras, the latter twenty-five Buddhas. I do not deny that in developing this theory one sect was influenced by the other; but I firmly believe that it cannot be made out which of the two sects first invented, or borrowed from the Brâhmans, this theory. For if the twenty-five Buddhas were worshipped by the Buddhists of the first centuries after the Nirvâna, the belief in twenty-four Tîrthakaras is equally old, as it is common to the Digambaras and Svetâmbaras, who separated probably in the second century after the Nirvâna. However the decision of the question whether the Buddhists or the Gainas originally invented the theory of the succession of prophets, matters little; it cannot influence the result to which the previous discussion has led us, viz. (1) that Gainism had an origin independent from Buddhism, that it had a development of its own, and did not largely borrow from the rival sect; (a) that both Gainism and Buddhism owed to the Brâhmans, especially the Samnyâsins, the groundwork of their philosophy, ethics, and cosmogony.

Our discussion has as yet been conducted on the supposition that the tradition of the Gainas as contained in their sacred books may on the whole be credited. But the intrinsic value of this tradition has been called into question by a scholar of wide views and cautious judgment. Mr. Barth, in the Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vol. iii, p. 90, admits that an historical personage is hidden under Nâtaputta, but he doubts that valid inferences may be drawn from the sacred books of the Gainas which, avowedly, have been reduced to writing in the fifth century A.D., or nearly a thousand years after the foundation of the sect. For, in his opinion, 'the self-conscient and continuous existence of the sect since that remote epoch, i.e. the direct tradition of peculiar doctrines and records, has not yet been demonstrated. During many centuries,' he says, 'the Gainas had not become distinct from the numerous groups of ascetics who could not boast of more than an obscure floating