There are no "Religions of peace".....

[The Grand Nudger]

If you say so, but it does shed some light on what brian may have been trying to communicate with the notion that religions tend to preach peace when powerless and then ruthlessly expand when in the majority.

What do you think a "good jain" would have been conceptualized as, then?  A person who refused to engage in the campaigns?  They were executed.

Again, this is the difference between 'a religion of peace' and 'peaceful religionists'. A believer violating the tenets of a religion doesn't change what those tenets are.

Boru

They weren't violating the terms of their religion.  The jain religion doesn't prevent killing, as so many believe.  It asserts responsibility for killing in service with pretext.  

That's exactly what the jain emperors did, offered pretext, and in that event it was the non murdery jains who were violating their religious tenets.  They were supposed to "defend" the good and righteous people against "evil". It just spo happened that those infant princes and their competing kingdoms were evil..so obviously they had to strike first.

(and, you know, "liberate" the inhabitants and their resources to live under the benevolent and enlightened jain dictatorship, lol)

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-for completeness of thought,that the modern incarnation of the religion emphasizes those peaceful aspects over the less-than-peaceful is a product of subsumation into later islamic authority that didn't exactly treat them well.  

It has nothing to do with jainism being a religion of peace, which it isn't..even when the religion -is- full of peaceful religionists, as it largely is today. Th notion that it's a religion of x isn't much more than our indicating preference over which -parts- of their religion we enjoy..and by default those who play with those parts are the "good jains"..the rest would be "doing it wrong".