Jain Bibliography

Author(s): Chhotelal Jain
Publisher: Bharti Jain Parisad

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The spiritual legacies of Jainism should not be confined to the Jaina community alone, but should be made available to entire humanity, especially in this age of crisis when violence threatend to ruin the entire fabric of human civilisation. The death!ess principle of non-violence (ahimsā) is the noblest heritage of Jainism for which the whole mankind should ever be grateful. Even if we fail at present to draw the precise chronological relations of the earlier Tīrthamkaras (promulgators of the Sacred Law), we are now definite that in the age of Lord Sri Krsna of the Mahābhārata epoch his cousin, Ariştanemi examplified in his own life the sublime principle of ahimsā by renouncing the world on the very eve of his wedding, when he saw that hundreds of innocent animals were about to be slaughtered simply for the entertainment of the guests at that royal wedding. That was the starting point of the realisation by Man of his kinship with the dumb animal world, differing from man only in linguistic expression, but animated by the same urge of life. So it was Jainism which for the first time bridged over the gulf between human life and aninal life, and preached the basic truth of one common life pervading the whole Society. From such a profound realisation was born that creative compassion which made man look upon the dumb cattle as "Poems of Pity” in the inimitable words of Mahatma Gandhi, who, as we know, comes from KathiawadGujarat, the home land of Lord Neminātha (C. 1200 B.C.) and which part of India even to-day is the stronghold of Jaina religion and culture. Then came another great preceptor, Lord Pārsvanātha (G. 800 B.C.), who was not only a great spiritual leader but the first systematizer of the Jaina philosophy based on the ChaturYana or the four-fold principles, which were amplified by Lord Mahāvīra (C. 600 B.C.), a senior contemporary of Gautama Budcha.
Buddhism no doubt, derived from Jainism its main inspiraiions as well as the principle of the church organisation (Samgha) and the fundamental doctrine of Ahimsa or non-violence. Buddhism simply applied to the life of the individual and of the nation