Introduction to Jainsim

Author(s): Dewan Bahadur A B Lathe
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

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JAINISM
goal is total non-killing. And even in the preliminary stages, a Jin has to avoid pain to others as far as possible. This is what is taught by European utilitarianism with the improvement that animals are placed upon the same footing as men in counting up the results of an action. It is to be left to the readers to judge whether the change is for the better or for the worse. That it is more comprehensive and wider in range, is plain enough. As to the propriety of this enlargement of the moral sphere, it depends on the moral susceptibilities of the man to decide the point.
The above is not a sketch of Jain philosophy in any way. It is an endeavour to point out to thoughtful students of comparitive religion and moral philosophy that a vast and fruitful field is all but unexplored by them. True that scholars like Jacobi have been spending good deal of valuable labour upon this subject. I profess to enlighten none of this class. Yet I may venture to say that the labours hitherto spent are chiefly confined to the literary aspects of Jain scholarship. The few works translated into English are only works of secondary value from ethical and theological standpoints. The above will clearly bring out the fact that Jainism is as vigorous and practical a school of thought as any European school and that it adds to its logical keenness of a well-cut Eastern system. It would be a material benefit to the task it have in view, if attention were paid to the great principle of aneakant vad, which anticipates the logic of paradoxes with which Hegal astonished the world. I hope the above will convince the indefatigible European scholar to look upon Jainism as a system pregnant with various lines of useful research and not as the chimera of a few fantastical minds. The small number of 2.2 million persons who profess the creed is not an index to the unpracticality of Jainism. The counting itself is at fault. The name may be borne by a small number;