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ARHAT VACANA Kundakunda Jñanapitha, Indore
WE HAVE TO MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
Rajmal Jain *
It has been since long and consistently deliberated, emphasized and described, based on our enriched epics, and speeches of our last Tirthankara Vardhamāna Mahāvira, by many individual Jaina saints, intellectuals, and scholars that Jainism is a Scientific Religion. Jainism has well-established scientific theories/models and explanation of almost all aspects of substance, life and nature that varying from microscoping to macroscopic scales. However, surprisingly, in spite of such strong scientific potentiality this religion has never been recognised by the scientific community of our own country as well as international. On the other hand, all basic facts realized all over the world have been simply taken from Jainism. For example, purity of drinking water is of utmost importance for the health has been mentioned since the inception of Jainism, from the era of first Tirthankara Rsabhadeva, a few millions of years back. But this truth was never realized on a global scale until recently, a few tens of years back only, when a few US and European scientists, and then later UNICEF mentioned. Now, many gadgets have been discovered to provide the filtered and processed water. Truely speaking, with the new and new inventions and research, and according changing technology at a very high pace, we really do not know whether these new gadgets are safe for our health. Perhaps, not at all in context to Jainism.
It is true that Jagdish Chandra Basu discovered the existence of life cycle in the plants, and it was never mentioned in the epics and literature of Jainism? Perhaps, even today, scientific community does not know the detailed and quantitative scientific knowledge about the various living being, which is mentioned in Jaina epics. Since last few years the international scientists taking the lead have talked a lot about the environment throughout the world that this subject is a new initiative of them, while the fact is that the environment is a fundamental concept of Jainism. The environment, according to Jainism, is not simply composed of five constituents but it needs to be understood on a larger aspect in context to the universe. It is great unfortunate on the Jainism that environmentalists even do not mention the Jainism instead of giving credibility to it. In this context, may I remind the Montreal Agreement on the Pollution Control? I think that during this agreement recognition to Jainism was far remote rather it was not even
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Arhat Vacana, 15 (3), 2003
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