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Jainism
antecedent bistory on the soil of India, taking us back to an age that can only be dimly surm ised", and that it must have been lipked with the then existing sister or mother civilization of central upper India (i.e. Ayodhyā-Hastināpura region)".1 Prof. Childe wrote, “India confronts Egypt and Babylonia by the third millenium with a thoroughly individual and independent civilization of her own, techpically the peer of the rest. And plainly it is deeply rooted in the Indian soil. It has endured, it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture”.2
Thus the most ancient yet highly developed civilization of the Indus people, which is ascribed by eminent archaeologists and antiquarians, to the Dravidian people 3 who, according to Rislay, "are the earliest inhabitants of India of whom we bave any knowledge”, 4 shows ample proof of these people being of Jaina persuation, long before the birth of the Vedic religion or even the beginning of the Aryan civilization. These ancient Jaip as are called
1 Mohenjodaro and the Indus civilization (1931), Vol. I, p. 106.
2 New Light on the most ancient East (1934).
3 Sir John Marshall, Father Dr. Heras, Rakbal Das Baperji, F. W. Thomas, Dr. R. K. Mukerji, Prof. H. Kabir, etc.
Dr. G. R. Hunter and the eminent Assyriologist Prof. Langdon are of opinion that Brāhmi is the lineal descendent of this prehistoric alphabet of the Indus Valley, And from the Jaina tradition we know that Rsabha was the first to discover the art of writing and that he named the first script he invented after the name of his daughter Brāhmi.
4 Census of India Report (1901), vol. I, Pt. I, p.508.
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