Letters to Vijayendrasuri

SR No.: 034934
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kashinath Sarak
Publisher: Yashodharma Mandir
Publication Year: 1960
Total Pages: 326
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 37 MB

Page 111

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299 Lawrenee St. New Haven, Conn., U.S.A
Dec. 20th, 1924. Dear Sir,
In reply to your kind letter of the 4th Nov., I would say that I have requested my publishers to forward to you a copy of my book on the 'Origin of the Religion' and also that I have reread my chapter on the Jain religion in my old book on the 'Religions of India' in order to see wbat modifications thirty years may have suggested. A few years after that book was published I spent a year in India and visited several Jain communites, where I had the pleasure of seeing and conversing with many of your co-religionists, at Ahmedabad, Mount Abu, Broach, Baroda, etc.
I found at once that the practical religion of the Jains was one worthy of all commendation and I have since regretted that I stigmatized the Jain religion as insisting on denying God, worshipping man, and nourishing vermin as its chief tenets without giving due regard to the wonderful effect this religion has on the character and morality of the people. But as is often the case, a close acquaintance with a religion brings out its good side and creates a much more favourable opinion of it as whole than can be obtained by a merely objective literary acquaintance. As to the literature, this is a matter apart from religion, and I suppose that what I had in mind was the absence in Jain literature of any outstanding literary production which could be compared in Brabmanisni with the Gita Govinda or the Bhagavad Gita or in Buddhism