Historical Facts About Jainism

Author(s): Lala Lajpatrai
Publisher: Jain Associations of India Mumbai

Page 44

32
used the influence they gained in this way over the minds of the Rulers to make them just and benign to their subjects." Here then you will have the correct idea of Jain influence and will realise that the Jains have been unjustly selected to be held out to the world as having in an unknown way caused the downfall of India. JAIN CONTRIBUTION TO ART, LITERATURE, ETC.
When justly or unjustly you have been pleased to say so much unsavoury about the Jains and Jainism, you have not a word of praise for the great Jain contribution to Art, Literature and Science, Mathematics, Medicine, Ethics, Philosophy and Logic. Volumes may be required to do complete justice to the Jain contribution to each of these subjects. We have already cited Doctor Johannes Hertel and the said quotation also goes to show the vast mass of the Jain Sanskrit, Prakrit and Vernacular Literature and its proper place in the Indian Literature. 55 It also shows what a great civilising factor this Jain. literature has been in India. The same Scholar has in another place expressed "Now what would Sanskrit poetry be without this large Sanskrit literature of the Jains! "The more I learn to know it the more my admiration rises". In every branch of literature the Jains possess first-rate works.
56
JAIN ART.
The greater portion of the Jain art is what is called the Rajput School of Art. This is so be