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K. Maidia
Karmon
Book Review
Karmic force lines
Situohons
Soul
Carmic morer
Volitengt
actives
MARDIA, K.V., The Scientific Foundations of Jainism, Motilal Banarsi
dass Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 1990. Pages xix+121. Price Rs. 85.00 (paper); Rs. 140.00 (cloth).
Jainism is a religious system of great antiquity. Jain tradition traces
origin back through almost limitless time. Certainly the most sceptical cannot deny its nearly 3000 years of history. In that time, of course, it has not stood still. Generation after generation of scholars have added and commented and explained, so that the total mass of written Jain scholarship is vast indeed and growing vaster with every year that passes. I have always maintained, since I first began my own amateur study of Jainism, that its principles accord well with modern science. Jain thought, Jain philosophy is timeless. However, the ancient texts are written in the languages of their particular time and their ideas are expressed in terms of the scientific vocabulary of their day. These are written in languages, Sanskrit and the Prakrit, which are welladapted to give precision and clarity to abstruse and difficult ideas, though not infrequently they can be difficult of interpretation owing to extremes of terseness or of repetitiveness. The terminology can be difficult, and a modern book on any aspect of Jain thought will be littered with and often rendered almost incomprehensible by, untranslated technical terms for which no concise modern equivalent has been sought or found.
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