Cosmology Old and New

Author(s): G R Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 15

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
(First Edition)
It was late Jain Dharmabhusaņa Brahmachari Sital Prasad who made me write this book and it is indeed very sad that he has not lived to see the publication of it. This late Brahmachari was inspired with the idea of bringing to light the ancient knowledge of the Jains in different branches of science in a language understandable by all. Accordingly, when through his exhortation, the Trustees of the late Rai Bahadur J.L. Jain's Estate asked me to write a modern commentary on the fifth chapter of Tattvårthādhigama sutra I could not refuse. The work was undertaken in January of 1937 and was completed by the middle of 1938 but circumstances prevented its publication for about four years
As has been remarked by Fermor, Asia has not been scientifically asleep during the whole of the several millennia before the introduction of modern science into India by the Europeans. Researches by oriental scholars into the old Sanskrit and Pāli texts are gradually bringing to light the valuable gems of the cultural heritage of India. The Jainas and the Buddhists made discoveries of immense value. In fact Dr. N.R. Dhar has attributed the intellectual stagnation in India after the 12th century to the decline of Buddhism under whose aegis science had considerably developed. About the contributions of the Jaina thinkers in the physics, biology and mathematics very little is known to the intelligent public for want of popular literature on the subject. The present is an humble attempt to put before the English-knowing public the contibutions of the Jainas in the domain of cosmology and atomic physics. It is not an attempt to seek in ancient texts the substance of modern theories, as some are likely to think, nor is there any attempt to bring by forced, distant and misleading analogies the ancient