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Jainism:
lists who have advanced all sorts of hypothesis concerning its rise'1. In fact, generally due to ignorance and inadequate information, sometimes under the influence of deeprooted notions and previously formed opinions, and not very seldom carried away by traditional or sentimental prejudices, scholars and historians have very often failed to do justice to Jainism and its history.
The early European savants who first began the work of reconstruction and compilation of India's history on the modern scientific basis, in the last quarter of the 18th century, at first took practically no notice of Jainism as even a separate sect. Their chief interest then lay in Buddhism, Brahmanism and Islam, which alone represented to them the India past and present. But even for the history of these, especially of the Hindus, they could not rely on indigenous sources, since they had already presumed that the Indians had never had any historic sense and had no historical records nor other reliable historical sources worth the name, for the reconstruction of their own history. Hence they came to the conclusion that for these they must necessarily look elsewhere. They had not far to seek. The various foreigners' accounts of India begin. ning from the 5th-4th century B. C. down to their own times, readily came to their rescue.
The early Greek writers, especially those who accompanied Alexander the Great in his eastern campaign (326 B.C.), or came to India subsequently as political ambassadors, like Megasthenes (305 B.C.), the Chinese Pilgrims like Fa-Hian (C. 400 A.D.), Huien Tsang (629645 A.D.) and Itsing (695 A.D.), some of the Arab merchants who traded with the Deccan kingdoms from
1. Practical Path, Appendix p. 174.
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