Jain Journal 1998 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 29

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JAIN JOURNAL : Vol-XXXIII, No. 2 October 1998 every scholar has his own way of interpreting or understanding the subject. As a result, controversy is centered round the conception of research, though it is pretty certain that through research we all try to find out the truth. We all know that research reveals what is hidden from the eyes of the common people; it manifests the hidden treasure of human knowledge buried under the debris of antiquity; it dispels the misconception of human understanding by removing one's own prides and prejudices; it revises our earlier notions of certain ideas, dogmas and imaginary things; it replaces our older theories in the light of the newer ones; it unfurls certain facts or identifies missing links in our ideas which were never known to us before; it eradicates our fanciful chimeras and establishes a firm faith in the minds of others, and gives hope and confidence to generations to come.
Research is the sign of progress of human civilization. It is the vehicle of knowing the past in the true perspective. When a country has a strong civilization with a good amount of literature and other documentary evidence, Research will help us to know and understand the past. Literature, in a sense, is the depository of human thoughts and ideas, their history and culture, their manners and customs, and above all, all aspects concerning human life and society as were current in their times. In addition to this, the religious beliefs and philosophical enquiry, the folk-lore and tradition, the then conception of cosmogony and cosmology, in one word, the human experiences and all the facets of human life under the sun are registered in literature. It is to be remembered that we cannot think of our past, obviously different from the present, living in our present situation and surroundings. It is a fact worth noting that "the opulence and luxury of ancient India are only a dream to us. The atmosphere the poets breathed, the luxury in the midst of which they wrote, the natural surroundings and social environments that actuated them in giving free vent to their genius, were quite different from the circumstances we are in; and as such, no study of scientific nature can be carried on without an acquaintance with them. Indeed, the writings of a poet cannot but embody the crying sentiment of the time, the social vices and virtues, and what may appear an insoluble mystery to us must have been as patent in the days of the poet as the noonday sun." It is to be remembered at the same time that if we do our research without understanding this very fundamental sentiment of the past, its time and environments, its phenomena and other parapharnelia, our endeavour to know the past through researches will be as futile as the attempt of a blind man to paint a landscape. If a researcher wants to do research on the past history and culture of a country, he will have to go back to the past, at least, by imagination, he will have to think in terms of those past