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BOOK REVIEW
JAINA COMMUNITY: A SOCIAL SURVEY, by Vilas Adinath Sangave, second revised edition, published by Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1980. Pages xxii+455. Price Rs. 120.00.
The book under review is the second revised edition of a work printed in 1959 regarding a small community, insignificant in number in a country where the total population is already 600 millions and may cross 1000 by the turn of the century, scattered all over the length and breadth of the country and even outside, in south-east Asia, western Europe and the USA, and at the forefront of the country's economy. Ethnically widely apart, the only common link between different sections of the community has been the religion of the Jinas as it spread from before the dawn of history to different parts of the country and continued to recruit its followers, devotees and admirers even in the historical period, and even in matters of religion, the community is grossly disintegrated into several hundred denominations. That such a community would provide a rich harvest of facts to a researcher goes without saying and this has been brought together in the present work which is in its field for over two decades.
The two major sources of the work have been the Census Reports which because of the insignificant size of the Jaina population are bound to give a scant attention to this community, and the replies received to the questionnaire issued in 1946. While the second revised edition takes care of the first in the light of the Census Reports of 1971, it has totally neglected the second where the material printed in 1959 has been reprinted verbatim, nor has a separate postscript been added to cover this shortcoming. The fact remains that there have been very substantial changes in the Jaina community, more substantial than perhaps in the case of any other social or religious minority group in the country, over the past three decades or so, more particularly because the Jainas are by and large a business community, and they have changed appreciably, not only in mobility, but also in social and religious attitudes, food, dress and habits, not only to take advantage of the changing face of the economy, but also to make full use or misuse of their affluence. This is a weakness of the present
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