Book Title: Jain Itihas Series 01
Author(s): B Benarsidass
Publisher: B Benarsidass

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Page 38
________________ ( 99 ) pitch darkness. They were the Nastikas who de nied such a thing as the next world, because they had not seen it, Shastras. The true state of ancient India is represented Ancient India in Jain in Jain Shastras. It is said therein that when the Digambara Rishi Rishabha was proclaiming to the world, Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah!" and was doing good to man, kind, Devas and animals by his Nirakshari Vani, there were also 363 Pakanda teachers who were preaching religions of their own, and one of them was Shukra or Brihaspati, the founder of the Charvaka religion. Certainly this seems to me the true state of affairs in ancient India. In time out of mind by the end of the 3rd Kala there was not only one teacher of one view of life, but there were 363, nay more, who preached their different doctrines and who explained this life and this world as they appeared to them. (C This opinion bears the sanction of Prof. Max Müller and almost all other scholars. Max Muller's opinion. Writing in 1899 when seventy-six years old and when he had neither the eyes nor the memory which he had at twenty-six and when he could expect younger men to help him as he gladly used to do in his youth to his preceptors and Gurus, that noble philosopher says: 44 'It would be a mistake to imagine that there was a continuing development into the various meanings assumed by or assigned to such pregnant terms as

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