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JAIN JOURNAL
food is really an evil which is responsible for many of the diseases and ill-health so prevalent in the present age of expensive living and feverish activity. Simplicity of diet, simplicity in games, simplicity of amusements, simplicity of life in general were the special features of happy old India proverbially the land of Peace and Plenty, Strength and Longevity.
Notwithstanding the so-called progress in surgery, bacteriology, and vaccines, the fact remains that human longevity, human happiness, human health, human strength, and physical development have been going down from generation to generation. The description of the statures of our ancestors, as given in ancient books, may be called myths and fictions, by the learned men of the present day, but it is a fact which must be admitted that the mummified bodies of the kings of Egypt and the fossils of ancient people are no dwarfish structures of the modern times. The descriptions given in the Illiad and the Odysey, in the Shahnama of Firdousi, in the Ballads of Alha and Udal, and in the pages of Tod's Rajasthan prove to demonstration that our ancestors were certainly far superior to us in physical stature and prowess, in courage and endurance, in mental and spiritual power. In the Shahnama Rustam is called bronzebodied; and the warroirs of olden times used to wear an armour the mere weight of which would be difficult for us to carry. The heavy swords, some of which are exhibited in museums and armouries, would not be easily lifted up by our strong men, what to say of their being wielded with such effect as to cut the warrior and the horse in twain. The wars, battles, and fights of our times are mere butcheries and wholesale destruction without any element of personal courage and valour. Can one imagine a worse form of killing than the bombing from aeroplanes of hospitals, churches, prisons, colleges, and cities, or the cannonading from long distance of miles.
Meat-eating, wine-drinking, the habit of taking ice and aerated waters, smoking, eating too much and too often are the evils of the present day. It is a preconceived notion that strength of body comes from meat diet alone. Flesh diet may bring about brute strength and animal passions but real power proceeds from the mind and not from the body, It is the soul-force which counts, and not physical weight or muscular appearance.
Kill, Kill, Kill is the cry of the day. Millions of lives are killed every day in the name of religion as sacrifices, in the name of health, for food, in fun or sport, in the name of science, for experiments, for rejuvenation to supply glands to man and woman, in the name of sanitation, and
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