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J. S. Conference Herald.
April.
fortunate enough to understand and follow him rightly. The practical life of a preceptor is an index to his position of a leader and guide. Every soul is free to judge for himself about the capabilities and responsibilities of such a leader and to adopt him or not as the case may be.
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But whatever the intuitions of such a great soul may be, those who are destined to whirl along with the wheel of the universe, find no time and inclination to be benifitted by the benign truths: rather to be born again and again in the several stages fo existence; they go against the established truth and create new moulds of thought, superficially attractive, but ruinous in the end. It was on account of this predestination that we find in the time of Mahavir as also before and after him, several heretics, seemingly imitating Mahavir or following their own way but unable to practice like him. Nature did not only stop there; it proceeded a step further and gave us schismatics who found pleasure in creating dissensions in our established church. Persecutions, internal feuds, arrogance and bad times were the chief. among many other, agents to bring about a division in the followers of Mahavir and in the year 609 A. D. i. e. in the year 139 Vikram, we see Shiv Bhooti the desciple of Krishna Sooree playing an important part in the religious and social history of the Jains. Whatever might have been the merits and demerits of the sense in which the doctrines were at that time interpreted by the great actor in this religious drama, and we are not inclined to touch upon such a delicate matter in our article which is written purely with the intention of bringing about an alliance, it is sure and certain that on account of him we the followers of Mahavir were split into two major sections known from that time as the Swetambers or white clad and the Digambers or Heaven clad. It did not only give us separate modes of worship and difference of opinion on some cardinal points of belief, but it created two distinct castes, known as the Oswals including Srimals and Porwals and the Sraogis, including Agarwal Jains. Intermarriages ceased, mutual love and fellow-feeling was lost and the two sections were inimically inclined towards each other. Their minds took a divergent course and instead of converging to the same focus became more estranged as they proceeded further on. And in the long run, loosing sight of the soothing influences of Mahavir's tenets, they were not ashamed to fight like irrational brutes in connection with places and images of worship often causing more harm than good to themselves, their religion, and their honour; nay, even desecrating the very holy object for which they took sides. They stood in courts of justice, opposed to each other praying to have their fates decided by those who had no concern with their religion. Better, a hundred times better it would have been for both to amicably settle the point of dispute themselves. More honorable would it have been for him who would have yielded his just claims to satisfy the whims and caprices of the other
