Who Are The Jaina

What is more significant for our thesis, this was the land where both Jainism and Buddhism flourished. It is generally believed that the two religions arose as offshoots of, or rather as protests against, the Vedic religion. But this probably is far from what the history evidences; when Jainism and Buddhism emerged, there was hardly any intercourse between the Āryavarta and the Greater Magadha – between the Vedic culture and the culture of this eastern extremity of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Moreover, there was a clear difference in what Bronkhorst calls their ‘basic concerns’ : while the Vedic religion was concerned with elaborate sacrifices, the Jainism and Buddhism were concerned primarily with karma and the resulting endless cycle of rebirths. These ideas entered the Vedic religion only later, after the ārya had sojourned for long in Greater Magadha; but by then it was no longer the Vedic region; it had undergone a total transformation into what could be called as the Brahmanism. [Bronkhorst, 2017 : Brahmanism – Its Place In Ancient Indian Society, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 51, Number 3, 362]

We have used the terms Jainism and Buddhism together, and this gives an impression that the two religions were contemporary. As religions, they were probably contemporary. But before Jainism evolved as a religion, there were people whom we could call as jaina. We could simply define them as early inhabitants of Greater Magadha. It is among these people that the belief system which later developed into Jain and Buddhist religions emerged around 6^th to 5^th century BCE; it is among these people that Siddhārtha Gautama and Vardhamāna were born. But what is most important is the fact that the term jaina is applicable to all the early inhabitants of Greater Magadha, including those that later came to be designated as Buddhists. Our focus here is not on their belief system; it is on their culture; the belief system was but a part of that culture. It was the unique culture of Greater Magadha that fostered the belief system that spawned the Jain and Buddhist religions; the defining characteristics of this culture were ātmavidyā and ahiṁsā, which was in stark contrast with the ārya culture. By ātmavidyā we mean the tendency to look within – to seek the higher truth within oneself, rather than in the external world or in some higher being. Ahiṁsā means a respect for all beings out of the realization of their sanctity and the need for their conservation. Both of these were in contrast with the focus of the ārya culture on sacrifices and placation of the higher being through these sacrifices.