42 Annual Address. [Feb. 



eleven chief disciples, who all remained true to him, and who are said 

 to have, between them, instructed 4,200 pramanas or monks ; but 

 only one of them, named Sudharman, survived his master, and it is 

 through him that Jainism has been continued to the present day. 

 Mahavira died in the seventy-second year of his life, in the small 

 town of Pawa, in the Patna district, Avhich is still considered one of 

 the most sacred spots by the Jains. The traditional dates of his 

 birth and death are 599 B.C. and 527 B.C. As modern research has shown 

 they cannot be far wrong. The corresponding dates for Buddha, who 

 lived to the age of eighty, are 557 and 477 B.C. It is certain that the 

 two men were contemporaries, and that Maliavira died some years before 

 Buddlia. The former, like his great contemporary, must have been an 

 eminently impressive personality. This accounts for his great success 

 as a sect founder. He certainly succeeded in eventually bringing over 

 to his way of thinking the whole order of Par9vanatha, so that the 

 name of Nirgrantha or "one without any ties," which originally 

 belonged to that order, attached itself to the order of Mahavira. The 

 only essential point of difference between them was the question of 

 wearing a modicum of clothes. The followers of Par^vanatha appear to 

 bave yielded that point for a time. The difference, however, being one 

 on a point of the merest decency, necessarily continued to subsist in a 

 dormant state, till a few centuries later it woke up again and, as we 

 shall see further on, led to the great division of the Jain order into the 

 pvetambaras and Digambaras or the ' White-clothed ' and ' Unclothed 

 ones.' The term Niigrantha or Nigantha, indeed, was the name by 

 which the Jains were originally known. They are mentioned under that 

 name in the same pillar edict of A^oka, about 234 B. C, which, as I 

 have already remarked, also names the Ajivika monks ; and it remained 

 their name for many centuries afterwards, for Hiuen Tsiang, in the 

 seventh century A.D., still knows them under no other name. How it 

 came to fall into disuse, and to give place to the comparatively modern 

 name Jain has not yet been explained. 



I will notice, in passing, the coincidence between Christ and 

 Mahavira with respect to the number twelve of their disciples which 

 in either case includes an apostate. An interdependence of Chris- 

 tianity and Jainism, I believe, has never been seriously propounded, 

 as has been done in the case of Buddhism with respect to similar 

 coincidences. Such coincidences are apt to be urged too far; and 



founders, who only associated for six years with the intention of combining their 

 Beets and fusing them into one ; but that at last they quarelled, probably on the 

 question who was to be the leader of the united sect j and thus their bitter hostility 

 is accounted for. 



