Jain Shwetambar Tirth Antriksha Parshwanath

Author(s): Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan Shirpur
Publisher: Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan

Page 88

safeguarded the religious beliefs and the customs of the Swetambaris. But after two year's co-operation the Swetambari followeres bad become convinced that the continuance of the association with the Digambaris was deterimental to the religious sentiments, rights and management of the Swetambaris, and on the 13th February 1908, matters came to a head, when the idol was mutilated by defendants 1 - 7 in the manner already referred to Since then the defendants had been obstructing the Swetambaris in placing upon the deity its accustomed ornaments and in restoring it to its self-existent form And the plantiffs claimed damages : injunctions restraining the defendants and other Digambari followers from raising any obstacle to the management of the Sansthan by the Swe. tambari or the restoration of the image to its originalform by them. Declarations were asked for, framed so as to obtain a decision from the Court that the Swetambari management of the temple and idol was absolute and uncontrolled; that no worship of the deity except in its self existent condition and covered as required by the religious principles of the Swetambaris should take place, and injunctions were sought to make these declarations effective at the instance of the Swetambari.
The answering case of the Digambaris may not inadequately be described as a complete repudiation of the claims of the Swetambaris with the counter assertion, by them-selves, of rights over the temple and the idol as extensive and as absolute as those put forward by the Swetambari. Their case is to be found in the written statement of defendant No. 8, which was adopted as their own by the other defendants.
In the course of that statement the charges of the plantiffs with reference to the alleged mutiliation of the idol by defendants are repudiated, and the views of the Digambaris with reference to the original form of the idol are put forward. With reference to these charges it may at once be stated that the plaintiffs' allegations as to the defendants' responsibility were not established at the trial, and their claim for damages, which was resisted by
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