Although this difficulty may seem very important
at first glance, it is, however, set aside by an oft repeated assertion in
the Jaina works. They repeatedly say that Par['s]va, the twenty-third Jina
only recognised four vows, and Vardhamana added the fifth. The Buddhists
have therefore handed down a dogma which Jainism recognises. The question
is merely whether they or the Jainas are the more to be trusted. If the
latter, and it is accepted that Vardhamana was merely the reformer of an
old religion, then the Buddhists must be taxed with an easily possible
confusion between the earlier and later teachers. If, on the other hand,
the Jaina accounts of their twenty-third prophet are regarded as mythical,
and Vardhamana is looked upon as the true founder of the sect,--then the
doctrine of the four vows must be ascribed to the latter, and we must
accept as a fact that he had changed his views on this point. In any case,
however, the Buddhist statement speaks for, rather than against, the
identity of Niga[n.][t.]ha with Jina. [Footnote: Jacobi, _loc. cit._.
p. 160, and Leumann, _Actes du Vlieme Congres Int. des Or_. Sect.
Ary. p. 505. As the Jaina accounts of the teaching of Par['s]va and the
existence of communities of his disciples, sound trustworthy, we may
perhaps accept, with Jacobi, that they rest on a historical foundation.]
Vardhamana's system, on the other hand, is quite irreconcilable with
Nataputta's assertion that virtue as well as sin, happiness as well as
unhappiness is unalterably fixed for men by fate, and nothing in their
destiny can be altered by the carrying out of the holy law.
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