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PREFACE.
This translation was made in 1917 at Indore after I had finished my translation of Jíva Kánda (Volume Fifth of the Sacred Books of the Jainas). Only this, Part I, was translated. My official duties, health and many similar circumstances obstructed both a further translation and an earlier publication. In this, as in the publication of my other long-lain manuscripts, I am beholden beyond repayment to my beloved and revered brethren Jaina Dharma Bhushana Brahmachari Sital Prasadaji and Pandit Ajit Prasada, M.A., LL.B., both of whom have been doing this labour of love and piety at Lucknow from August 1926.
Karma Kánda, in brief, is a scientific analysis of Evil, of Sin. Evil is material, as God or the Pure Soul is certainly immaterial. The Jiva Kánda deals primarily with the Soul ; the Karma Kanda with the material and self-forged Karmic fetters of this soul. It describes the matter and manner of this bondage, so that true and accurate knowledge may help the imprisoned, embodied soul to live a life leading to freedom and Bliss.
Indeed the only use of true books-the “Bibles” of the world-is to teach people how to live. Otherwise they are a "dull and endless strife", and the over production of books on all subjects and in all countries may well be called a prostitution of the Press, and distraction and dissipation of the human intellect. The Press is like the Frankenstein of old, which created by man, has mastered him to the strangling point. The fiction Magazine with its teachings of crime and lasciviousness, the daily newspaper with its reports of divorces, dacoities, and all the dirty details of human defects and aberrations, are the greatest instruments of the Devil.
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