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JAINISM AND DEMOCRACY
.creativity is lost. Still its existence continues as a sign of social glory or decoration. Thus every culture, though creative in the beginning, gradually loses its contact with the life. The aspect of ornamentation accummulates from the phase of creativity, it passes into the phase of decorum. In other words we can say that it loses its living force and freezes into a lifeless display.
Indian culture manifests the above phenomenon in every walk of its life. The history of religion, philosophy, language, poetry, art, architecture, dress, ornaments and every other aspect that can be included into culture, testifies to the above.
Religion :
The deities of the Rigvedic period were connected with every day life. The Aryans received both cruel as well as sympathetic treatment from nature. She had been harsh as well as mild, fierce as well as charming. Their creative mind imagined powerful supernatural conscious beings at the control of these changes and coined them as deities. But in the period of Yajurveda, when the life was comparatively settled and the rigours of nature were controlled, the gods lost their contact with nature and day to day life. They came to be regarded as the controllers of human destiny. The institution of sacrifice came into existence mainly as a measure of social organization. Gradually that also lost its importance and supernatural elements were added. The Upanishads, in their begining pointed out to the unity of life and proposed that as soon as this unity was realized fear would disappear. Because the
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