Yet it is not impossible that the first opposition to sacerdotalism may have been due to Jaina influences, and that Indian rationalistic speculation may have been inaugurated by early Jaina leaders. We know that the Buddhist king As´oka, in his inscriptions--which are referred to the third century B.C.--mentions the Jainas under the name of Nirgrantha, as if well established and well known in his time. We know, too, what has happened in our own country. Not long ago there was a reaction from extreme Evangelical religious thought in England. But because that reactionary movement is called by the name of a particular leader, it by no means follows that he was chronologically the first to set it in action. In the same way it may possibly turn out to be a fact that the Jaina P[=a]rs´van[=a]tha, rather than the Buddha Gautama, was the first excogitator of the heretical ideas and theories common to both. It seems to me, indeed, not improbable that Jainism, which is now at length assimilating itself to Hind[=u]ism, maintained its ground more persistently in India, not only because, unlike Buddhism, it sullenly refused to fraternize with Br[=a]hmanism, and to court converts from other creeds, but because the lines of demarcation which separated it from the orthodox system were in some essential points more sharp and decided than those which separated Buddhism. It is, at any rate, a fact that the Jainas claim for their system a prior origin to that of Buddhism, and even affirm that Gautama Buddha was a pupil of their chief Jina, Mah[=a]v[=i]ra. Nor will it surprise us that the legendary history of Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, who succeeded Pars´van[=a]tha, and was the first real propagator of the Jaina creed, favours the theory of such a priority. True, Mah[=a]v[=i]ra is described as the son of Siddh[=a]rtha, which is an epithet given to the Buddha. But he is also said to have had a pupil named Gautama, and his death is fixed by the concurrent testimony of both parties of Jainas, who follow different reckonings, at a date corresponding to about B.C. 526 or 527, the usual date assigned by modern research to the Nirv[=a]na or death of Buddha being 477 or 478. But it must not be supposed that P[=a]rs´van[=a]tha and his successor Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, are regarded by the Jainas as their first supreme Jinas. They were preceded by twenty-two other mythical leaders and patriarchs, beginning with Rishabha,[6] whose fabulous lives protracted to millions of years, and whose fabulous statures, proportionally extended, were probably invented in recent times, that the Jaina system might not be outdone by that of either Br[=a]hmans or Buddhists.