ABSTRACT
A well-known passage in one of the older scriptures of the flvetåmbara Canon (UttS 23) attempts to explain why there should be a difference between the teachings of the two fordmakers. Ke¬in, a follower of Pår¬va, and Gautama, a disciple of Mahåv⁄ra, are depicted as discussing whether the Fourfold Restraint or the five Great Vows represent the true doctrine. Gautama’s explanation is that there is a discrepancy in the outward appearance of the doctrine, which is in reality unified, because the moral and intellectual capabilities of the followers of the fordmakers have differed. In the time of the first fordmaker there was difficulty in understanding the doctrine which was being preached for the first time, while in the time of the last fordmaker, as the process of moral and spiritual decline began to take hold, people had difficulty in putting it into practice. In the time of the twenty-two intervening fordmakers, however, it was possible both to understand what was entailed in the doctrine and put it into practice. In other words, the first and last fordmakers formulated their teachings in the form of the five Great Vows in which prohibition of sexual relations is specifically prescribed as a result of the inadequacies of their followers, whereas such a ban would have been understood by the followers of the other fordmakers as being incorporated in the prohibition on possession. A further form of differentiation is said to be that the male ascetic followers of R˛‚abha and Mahåv⁄ra were naked, while those of Pår¬va and the other fordmakers wore clothes.
