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Introduction to Jainism
of Jainism were either borrowed from or were a survival of the thought currents of the primitive people of eastern India. 123 This was the primitive or pre-Aryan or non-Aryan background of Jainism. But it was also influenced by the thought and practices of Brāhmaṇism. 124 This was the Aryan background of Jainism.
Outlines of Jainism
It is beyond the scope of this book to deal with the metaphysics, philosophy, mythology, ethics and rituals of Jainism exhaustively. We turn to these subjects succinctly. Jainism does not believe in a Creator125 or a Creator God 126 or a Supreme Being127 and also rejects the theory of creation. 128 Like the Uttara-Mīmāmsā School of Hindu philosophy, Jainism views the world as a product of evolution. 129 Jainism holds that the world is not created or ruled by God;130 it is without beginning and end;131 it is everlasting and exists on the strength of its elements. 132
Conception of God in Jainism
In Jaina metaphysics there is no room for God either as a creator or as a distributor of prizes. 133 Jainism has generally been labelled an atheistic religion. In an article on atheism, Hermann Jacobi, an internationally renowned authority on Jainism, wrote,
123. AOIU, p. 363.
124. S.D. Jha, op. cit., Introduction, pp. 13, 235-6, Retrospect.
125. CUHI, I, pp. 189-90.
126. AJAA, p. 50.
127. JI, p. 4.
128. CUHI, I, pp. 189-90.
129. Ibid., p. 190.
ERE, II, p. 187.
130. 131. OISJ, p. 9; ERE, II, p. 187.
132. Ibid., p. 9.
133. ACHI, p. 108.
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