280 SKETCH OF THE 



JBauddha sectaries than of the Jains, who admit the legends and worship 

 the deities of the Puranas, and who hold it the heigh th of impiety to 

 question the written doctrines of their own teachers. The proofs from 

 classical writers, therefore, are wholly inadequate to the decision of the 

 antiquity of the Jains, and we are still entirely left to sources of a less 

 satisfactory description. 



All writers on the Jains, entitled to our attention, agree in admitting an 

 intimate connexion between them and the Bauddhas ; the chief analogies 

 have been above adverted to, and the inference of later origin is justly found- 

 ed on the extravagant exaggerations of the system adopted by the Jains. 

 Their identity of origin rests chiefly upon the name of Gautama, which 

 appears as that of Verddhamana's chief pupil, and as the legislator of the 

 JBauddha nations in the east. The dates also assigned to both are not far 

 removed ; the apotheosis of the Buddha, Gautama, occurring five hundred 

 and forty-three years before Christ, and the death of Mahavira, the pre- 

 ceptor of the Jain Gautama, about the same time. That there is some 

 connexion may be conceded, but for reasons already assigned, it is not 

 likely that the persons are the same ; the Jains have not improbably deriv- 

 ed their Gautama from that of their predecessors. 



No argument for the antiquity of the Jains is derivable from the 

 account given of Rishabha in the Bh&gavat Purdna. He was not a 

 seceder from the true faith, although the mistaken imitation of his 

 practices is said to have led others into errors, evidently intending the 

 Jain heresy. He is scarcely identifiable, in consequence, with the Jain 

 Rishabha, the first of the Tirthankaras ; but even if that were the case, 

 no confidence could be placed in the authority, as the work is a modern 

 compilation, not exceeding, at the most, twelve centuries of antiquity. 

 The refutation of Jain doctrines in the Brahma Sutras, is a less ques- 

 tionable testimony of their early existence ; but the date of that work is to 



