International Jain Conference 1985 3rd Conference

Author(s): Satish Jain, Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Ahimsa International

Page 176

Glimpse of Jaina Cultural Heritage
Dr. Jyoti Prasad Jain
Jainism represents one of the oldest and very comprehensive religio-cultural systems, indigenous to India. It is also endowed with a rich and varied cultural heritage and a distinctly ennobling way of life. In order to convey all this, I shall quote a few eminent authorities.
"It goes back to a very early period, and to primitive currents of religious and metaphysical speculation, which gave rise to the oldest Indian philosophies. The Jainas seem to have worked out their system from the most premitive notions about matter." (Hermann Jacobi)
"Only in Jainism, of all the living religions, do we see a fusion of the primitive with the profound. It has preserved elements from that first stage of man's religious awareness, animism, It affirms the separateness of spirit from matter, even though our modern philosophers and religionists regard any form of dualism as untenable. Despite the opinion of these men, Jainism is fundamentally scientific. And, it may very well be, contrary to the opinions of many anthropologists and students of comparative religion, the oldest living faith.” (Noel Retting)
"There is truth in the Jaina idea that their religion goes back to a remote antiquity, the antiquity in question being that of pre-Aryan, so-called Dravidian period, and that Jainism is the oldest of all Dravidian-born philosophies and religions ... (even) Jaina Yoga originated in pre-Aryan India, and has nothing to do with orthodox Brahmanism which simply appropriated it in later centuries" (Heinrich Zimmer)
"He who has a thorough knowledge of the structure of the world cannot but admire the inward logic and harmony of Jain ideas. Hand in hand with the refined cosmo-graphical ideas goes a high standard of astronomy and mathematics." (Walthur Schubring)
And, Professor L.P. Tessitori observes, Jainism is of a very high order. Its important teachings are based upon science. The more the scientific knowledge advances, the more the Jaina teachings will be proved."
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