Epitome of Jainism

Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 48

very strangeir But when one remembers that none of the systems of philosophy came to being all of a sudden, but they were more or less in extant in a still remoter age, and that this development into systems of philosophy means their embodiment in the forms of Sutras at different periods, things becomes easy to understand. For this is further corroborated if we interpret the religious upheaval in view of the fact that in the great religious Congress of the Indian saints and sayes of yore in the Naimishäranya, when the authority of the Vedas were being made as binding upon the free thinkers of those days, those who left the Congrsss in silent protest against such actions of the Brahman-Rishis, were dubbed as Nästikas. The word Nastika (atheist) in the Indian scripture does not mean one who did not believe in the existence of God, but rather one who did not accept the infallibility and ultimate authority of the Vedas. Were it otherwise then the System of Sankhya in which Kapil, like Laplace, did not care about for getting it a God in the scheme of his universe, would not have been taken as one of the six theistic systems of philo.