Jainism Before 650 BCE

Contents: Introduction/Shugan C. Jain. 1. Antiquity and Coexistence of Sramana and Vedic Traditions/Maruti Nandan Prasad Tiwari. 2. Tracing the Existence of 22nd and 23rd Tīrthamkaras/Shugan C.Jain. 3.Antiquity of Jainism/Bhagchandra Jain Bhaskar. 4. The Inheritance and Evolution of the Sramana Tradition in China/Shi Guagquan and Dong Yinjie. 5.Vratya: A Representative of Sramana Tradition/Ganesh Umakant Thite. 6. Historicity of Tīrthaṁkara Neminatha in the Context of Kinship with Vasudeva-Krsna and Continuity of Tradition: Study in the Light of Texts and Archaeological Findings/Shanti Swaroop Sinha. 7. The Archaeological Findings at Kankalī Ṭīla, Mathura, Preceding ParSvanatha/Renuka Porwal. 8. Development of Jainism and Buddhism along the Silk Road: An Analysis/Volkmar Ensslin. 9. Role of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts in the Documentation of Jainism in Ancient Sri Lanka/Kanchana Dehigama. 10. Origin and Development of Jain Sramanic Culture in India: Evidences from Literature and Art/Vinay Kumar. 11. Antiquity and Historicity of Jainism with Special Reference to Sramana Tradition/Umesh Kumar Singh. 12. The Notions of Contemporaneity of Mahavira and the Buddha and the Chronological Epoch of the Mahavira in Sixth Century BCE: A Revisit in 2019/Megh Kalyanasundaram. 13. Crisis of Separate Identity in Early Indology: Jainism vis-à-vis Buddhism/Amruta Natu. Appendices. Consolidated Bibliography. Index.

Ancient history of India reveals that there were two parallel traditions in India, viz. Vedic and Sramanic. The Sramana Tradition includes Jainism, Buddhism and others such as the Ajivikas and Ajtianas. Jain religious tradition is one of the oldest living religions of India. Historicity of 24th Tirthankara Mahavira in sixth century BCE is well established. The Jain records mention the name of 23 tirthankaras before Mahavira. Among them Parsvanatha was the 23rd and Neminatha was the 22nd.

Parsvanatha is now acknowledged as a historical figure by a number of scholars. The existence of Parsva’s Order in Mahavira’s time is recorded as a discussion between the followers of Parsva (caturyama) and those of Mahavira (pancayama) in the Uttara-adhyayanasiitra. Keeping this fact in mind, International School for Jain Studies (ISJS) in association with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORT) organized a two-day International Seminar on “Traces of Sramana Tradition (with special reference to Jainism): Prior to 650 BCE” on 5-6 October 2019 in Pune. This book contains 13 selected papers presented in this seminar exploring the available archaeological, cultural, social and literary evidences to substantiate the existence of Jain tradition before 650 BCE.