views on this question have been divided.  Oldenberg, Kern, Hoernle, and others have accepted this new view without hesitation, while A Weber (Indische Studien Bd.  XVI, S. 240) and Barth (Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, tom.  III, p. 90) keep to their former standpoint.  The latter do not trust the Jaina tradition and believe it probable that the statements in the same are falsified.  There are certainly great difficulties in the way of accepting such a position especially the improbability that the Buddhists should have forgotten the fact of the defection of their hated enemy.  Meanwhile, this is not absolutely impossible as the oldest preserved Jaina canon had its first authentic edition only in the fifth or sixth century of our era, and as yet the proof is wanting that the Jainas, in ancient times, possessed a fixed tradition.  The belief that I am able to insert this missing link in the chain of argument and the hope of removing the doubts of my two honoured friends has caused me to attempt a connected statement of the whole question although this necessitates the repetition of much that has already been said, and is in the first part almost entirely a recapitulation of the results of Jacobi’s researches.]

The oldest canonical books of the Jaina, apart from some mythological additions and evident exaggerations, contain the following important notes on the life of their last prophet. [Footnote:  The statement that Vardhamana’s father was a mighty king belongs to the manifest exaggerations.  This assertion is refuted by other statements of the Jainas themselves.  See Jacobi, S.B.E. Vol.  XXII, pp. xi-xii.] Vardhamana was the younger son of Siddhartha a nobleman who belonged to the Kshatriya race, called in Sanskrit Jnati or Jnata, in Prakrit Naya, and, according to the old custom of the Indian warrior caste, bore the name of a Brahmanic family the Ka[’s]yapa.  His mother, who was called Tri[’s]ala, belonged to the family of the governors of Videha.  Siddhartha’s residence was Ku[n.][d.]apura, the Basukund of to-day, a suburb of the wealthy town of Vai[’s]ali, the modern Besarh, in Videha or Tirhut. [Footnote:  Dr. Buehler by a slip had here “Magadha oder Bihar".—­J.  B.] Siddhartha was son-in-law to the king of Vai[’s]ali.  Thirty years, it seems, Vardhamana led a worldly life in his parents’ house.  He married, and his wife Ya[’s]oda bore him a daughter Anojja, who was married to a noble of the name of Jamali, and in her turn had a daughter.  In his thirty-first year his parents died.  As they were followers of Par[’s]va the twenty-third Jina, they chose, according to the custom of the Jainas, the death of the wise by starvation.  Immediately after this Vardhamana determined to renounce the world.  He got permission to take this step from his elder brother Nandivardhana, and the ruler of his land divided his possessions and became a homeless ascetic.  He wandered more than twelve years, only resting during the rainy season, in the lands of the La[d.]ha, in