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Scientific Secrets of Jainism
merits, adopts the path of spirituality, he either totally fails or does not get expected success. On the other hand, the path of science is also not so easy. For knowing the secrets of nature, even the ultramodern instruments of science, prove to be very dwarfish.
Though in the modern age of science, scientific instruments are available in plenty, they cannot stand in comparison with spiritual instruments. But in the present time, it is very difficult to get spiritual merits and instruments. So neither of the two paths, can be fully useful to us. Therefore, there is only one way open to us for satisfying our curiosity. We should study and present to other curious people of the world the secrets of nature that the ancient sages attained on the spiritual path and passed over to us.
The Jambūdvipa Laghusangrahani gives the description of the earth i. e. Jambūdvipa and the objects contained in it as presented by our ancient sages. One sees a great difference between descriptions of objects found in these ancient books and the descriptions of objects found in books of modern science and astronomy. It is very necessary to find out the real reason for this difference.
Generally speaking, Jain Āgamas are the speeches of śramaņa Bhagavān Śri Mahavirasvāmi, the sermons that he gave after attaining omniscience. The eleven prime disciples, Ganadharas, put the sermons in the book-form. There are 12 such sacred books which are referred as Dvādaśāngi. In ancient time, the Dvādaśāngi was kept on the tip of tonge and every monk learnt it by heart. The tradition of learning it by heart, continued nearly till the times of Śrutakēvali Śri Bhadrabāhusvāmi. During twelve year famine in his times, some scriptural knowldge was forgotten by monks as a result of inadequate nutrition and weak memory. After 980 years of nirvāņa of Lord Mahāvira i.e. about the year 510 of the Vikram era in the Vallabhi Conference (vācanā) Śri Dēvarddhigani kşamāśramana Mahārāja got all Āgama scriptures, put into written form, much of the scriptural knowledge was forgotten and whatever was available contained some doubtful text. Almost all the palm-leaf manuscripts of Agama scriptures, which are available today, belong to the eleventh century of the Vikram era or a later time. It means that not a single palm-leaf manuscript dictated by Sri Dēvarddhigani kşamāśramana Mahārāja is available today. During these 500 - 600 years, perhaps there have been many other changes in the texts of Āgamas and
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