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mass of the people with the teachings of ahimsā and inefficacy of sacrificial rites.”
Thus Tīrthankara Mahāvīra emphasised the basic fact that every living being has a sanctity and a dignity of its own and therefore one must respect it as one expects one's own dignity to be respected by others. He also firmly emphasised that life is sacred irrespective of species, caste, colour, creed or nationality. On this basis he advocated the principle of "Live and let live'. In this way Tīrtharkara Mahāvīra convinced the people that the practice of ahimsā is both an individual and a collective virtue and showed that ahiṁsā has a positive force and a universal appeal.
7. Insistence on Tolerance
Advocacy of the principle of religious tolerance has been the characteristic contribution of Tirthankara Mahāvīra and the Jaina Āchāryas. When Tirtharkara Mahāvīra promulgated Jaina religion, he never deprecated other religions and never tried to prove that other religions are false. In fact he propounded the doctrine of Anekāntavāda, i.e., many-sidedness, and showed that a thing can be considered from many points of view. That is why he always advised the people to find out the truth in anything after taking into account several sides or aspects of that thing. This obviously broadens the outlook of the persons as they are made to look at a thing from different angles. At the same time the principle of Anekāntavāda does not engender the feelings of enmity or hatred towards the other religionists because it believes that other religions also would be having some truth from their points of view. Hence by enunciating the principle of Anekāntavāda, Tirthankara Mahāvīra and the Jaina āchāryas advocated the principle of tolerance and asserted that it could be applied to intellectual, social, religious and other fields of activities. As a result we find that Anekāntavāda has definitely a bearing on man's psychological and spiritual life and that it is not confined to solve a mere ontological problem. It has supplied the philosopher with catholicity of
