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Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
are, at present, relatively rarely adopted. In the Digambara community, it is true, they act still a certain part. The Śravaka Pratimās are eleven in number and form a series of austerities and performances, the standard and duration of which rises periodically, and which finally culminate in an attitude resembling monkhood.
The Sadhu Pratimas are twelve in number. They form, likewise, a series of restrictions and austerities increasing in intensity, though not in duration.
As we have seen, Jaina ethics is the result as well as the basis of a high standard of Human Culture: Self-control, Non-injury and Free-determination being its chief principles, and unselfish service, study, veneration of the really Great, purity, and sobriety being some of its categorical demands.
It is a matter of great satisfaction that this time honoured culture has not died out as yet but is being carefully preserved by a community of enthusiastic ascetics as well as laymen, who, though small in number, still act an important part in Indian Society, especially in the north and west of India, by the esteerned position that many of its individuals occupy, and, last but not least, by the admirable way in which modern ascetics have understood to be active in the service of their faith, without transgressing the narrow limits of their monkhood.
I am, myself, deeply indebted to several of the venerable Śvetāmbara Sādhus, especially late Śāstraviśārada Jainācārya Vijaya Dharma Sūri, and his successor, Acarya Vijayendra Sūri, for having enabled me to make a long and profound study of Jainism at the source, and I wish to thank him and his group of learned Sadhus most heartily, and to give expression to the hope that a long life may be granted to him and his Sadhus, to his spirit of benevolence, and to the noble culture of the Jainas too.
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