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 95

religious views. At the end of the Champaka story, I had no difficulty in explaining, to my pupils 1) the technical superiority of Jain story - tellers over Buddhist narrators, and the great importance of Jain storeis for the study of comparative literature; 2) the great moral value of Jain religion, a) as compared with the Brahmanical animal sacrifice, b) as compared with the Christian doctrine of remission of sins. I am not at all an adversary of christian religion in general, but this main dogma has always been unintelligible to me. It dose not at all further the moral education of the population, which the Jain dogma of transmigration and retaliation does. As for the dogma of transmigration of souls. which at first sight is very strange to the European mind, 1 pointed out to the students that it is not at all unreasonabls. That Stuff HET is transmigrating from dead bodies to the earth and the air and from there to plants and animals and men, nobody after Darvin will decay. Nobody ever saw a soul not united with stuff (matter) and the old sages of the Upanishads who first propagated the doctrine of transmigration must have observed this transmigration of matter and hence as well as from other circumstances concluded to the transmigration of soul equally.
The two students of sanskrit. which are following all my lectures are Mr. Porzig, of Sena, and Miss Krause. Ph. D. of Halle. Both of them are very well gifted and very assiduous young people; both of them have the intention to qualify themselves for the charge of University lectures ( in German; Privatdozenten), and I have no doubt that, in due time, they will be promoted to University Professors. They are rapidly progressing in their studies. Miss Krause studied for
5 years, German and modern philology and was, after a very