Book Title: Is Jain Geography Astronomy True
Author(s): Nandighoshsuri, Jivraj Jain
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scripture

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 36
________________ (36) Foreword Geography or 'Bhoogol', as it is called in Indian languages, is the most contentious and controversial issue between Jain philosophy and modern observations based on ground mapping and space borne techniques. The same is true for astronomy and cosmology. Geography, astronomy and cosmology were all treated together in the olden days, may be because they were considered to be interrelated and their contents were limited. The idea behind coining the word 'Bhoogol' itself shows that 'bhoo' (Earth) is 'gol', (round), like a ball. I therefore fail to understand all the controversy about the earth being disc shaped and flat and that is the basis on which the whole edifice of geography and astronomy according to the Jain scriptures has been developed. When the fundamentals are wrong, one has to go on inventing new and erroneous reasons for explaining the observations. And this has, unfortunately developed and labeled as Jain geography. Frankly, there is nothing like Jain, Christian or Hindu geography and modern geography. All geographies should be the same and consistent with observations. Therefore, the word Jain Geography is a misnomer and at the least, it should be called Jain model of Earth's geography. May be we should just treat it as the state of knowledge at the time of its documentation and this is

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232