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INTRODUCTION
Environmental protection is intrinsic, innate and inherent in Jainism. It is in-built and integrated in every principle, tenet and mandatory doctrine of Jainism, in its epistemology, ontology and metaphysical concepts. Enlightened Jain icons, Arhats, Tirthankaras, learned saints and Acharyas pondered over and considered every aspect of environment, various causes of its degradation and necessary measures, prophylactic to pre-empt as well as remedial to redress and redeem and also for its sustained maintenance. They evolved and prescribed environment friendly concepts, tenets, principles, ordained mandatory doctrines and an elaborate code of conduct to ensure sustained, congenial, clean, healthy and symbiotically harmonious environment.
The connotation about environment is much wider than generally understood. It implies not only physical environment consisting of air, water, soil, animals etc. but also social environment of multitudinous relationships between individual human beings, families, groups, societies and nations and also interdependent interactions between all life forms that also interact with physical constituents. Both physical and social environment are interactive, mutually reinforcing and influencing to mould and condition each other. If physical or natural environment with its myriad constituents (air, water, soil, minerals etc.) suffers degradation, pollution and imbalance, the consequences
INTRODUCTION
