Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/38

 of the Christian era. The following tradition is given by Jaina authorities as the reason for this early transplanting of the faith to such a distance. There is no conclusive evidence of the truth of the narrative, and some modern scholars think it a pure invention; yet it links itself so closely and naturally to later facts, that it is safer to say that it is probably, though not certainly, historic.

Some two centuries after Mahāvīra’s death, according to this story, a terrible famine visited Magadha, which had been the scene of his labours. Year after year the monsoon, on which the fertility of the land depends, failed, until at length all the accumulated stores of grain were consumed, and it became apparent that the country had no longer any superfluity, out of which to provide for a large body of mendicants. Accordingly half the community, under the leadership of Bhadrabāhu, moved off towards the south and settled in Mysore; and as the famine lasted for twelve years, they were able to establish their faith in all that region. We are also told that the emigrants were accompanied to Mysore by Ċandragupta, the first Emperor of India, and founder of the Maurya Dynasty, whom the Jaina claim as a co-religionist. They add that he committed religious suicide by self-starvation at Śrāvaṇa Belgolā. If the tradition is trustworthy, the date of the migration must be placed c. 298 or 296 ., for Bindusāra succeeded Ċandragupta about that time.

This period is perhaps the most important in Jaina history; for not only did it lead to the establishment of Jainism in the south, but it is also the time of the fixing of the earliest canon of Jaina scripture.

Tradition says that all the monks did not migrate to the south; some, under the leadership of Sthūlabhadra, preferred to cling at any risk to the hallowed scenes of their Holy Land. It was perhaps easier for the minority to carry things through than it would have been for the whole unwieldy body; or it may have been that the death of many