Epitome of Jainism

SR No.: 006737
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: K B Jindal
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi
Publication Year: 1988
Total Pages: 248
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 13 MB

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An Epitome of Jainism ask: "What is the value of science if it does not reveal the reality which surrounds us ? How are we to discern, through ever-changing theory, the true outline of the world in which we live ?" Remember that science has failed to answer these questions. Again in the words of Leopold Infeld, "What is the use of introducing these great questions of metaplıysics into the sphere in which we are only just beginning to appreciate the immense complexity of what are seemingly the simplest phenomena of nature ?....
Scientific theories arise, develop and perish. They have their span of life, with its successes and triumphs, only to give way later to new ideas and a new outlook.”
As has been remarked by Fermor, Asia has not been scientifically asleep during the whole of the several millennia before the introduction of modern science into India by the Europeans. Researches by oriental scholars into the old Sanskrit and Pali texts are gradually bringing to light the valuable gems of the cultural heritage of India. The Jains and the Buddhists made discoveries of immense value. In fact Dr. N. R. Dhar has attributed the intellectual stagnation in India after the 12th century to the decline of Buddhism under whose aegis science had considerably developed. About the contributions of the Jain thinkers in the field of physics, biology and mathematics very little is known to the intelligent public for want of popular literature on the subject. The present work is a commentary on the fifth chapter of Tattvarthâdigama Sutra. *It is an humble attempt to put before the English-knowing public the contributions of the Jains in the domain of cosmology and atomic physics. It is not an attempt to seek in ancient texts the substance of modern theories, as some are likely to think nor is there any attempt to bring by forced, distant and misleading analogies the ancient discoveries in line with the modern science. The points where the two agree and where they do not have been laid bare.
One is apt to ask: how is the present work going in any way to serve the cause of the Jain religion or of science ? My answer is that the present work is only one link in the chain. When the chain is complete the world will know the peculiar merit of Jain religion, that it has treated not only the problems of soul, truth and ahimsâ in a rational way but that it deals with maiter and the physical universe in quite the same manner. With regard to the cause of science, some day some physicist, like our eminent Jain physicist Dr. D. S. Kothari may take up some prediction of Jain physics, work it out mathematically and astonish the world. The ‘animistic' belief of the Jains that the plants are endowed with life has already been demonstrated wonderfully by late Sirj. C. Pose, F.R.S. Who can say that the development of the mercury-vapour turbines in America is not the outcome of the descriptions of the mercury vapour engines occurring in ancient Jain and Buddhist works like the Samarângan Sätradhār and Silpa Samhita ? Not only
* Supra Book 2, p. 21.