Jain Shwetambar Tirth Antriksha Parshwanath

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

Page 89

the defendants on technical as well on substantial grounds, has failed and is no longer persisted in.
For the rest, the case presented by the written statement referred to was that the temple in question originally and absolutely belonged to the Digambari Jains, the Digambaris at Shirpur doing all the management with the help and advice of other followers at Khamgaon and Karanja. The association between the two sects referred to in the plaint was stated to have been brought about by an invitation from the Digambaris to some respectable gentlemen frora among the Swetambaris to join in a committee of management under an arrangement which Fontinud until 1908, when the Treasurer and Vice
asicent of the mmittee, both Swetambaris, with a view
withholding the entire wealth of this Digambari temple, nad kept back the accounts which, when called upon, they had agreed to r resent; in consequence of which conduct, as appears to be implied in the written statement, their instance. In confirmation of the assertion that the temple and idol were Digambari, it was pointed out in the statement that the Deity in question was Digambari in its position, having been installed by a Jain Digambari King in a temple of Digambari style and construction and that itself a principal idol, it was surrounded by Digambari idols worshipped only by Digambaris. The Swetambari had never worshipped this deity with the chaksu and tika and ornaments, and they had never been permitted by the Digambari so to do.
No conflict could be more complete and eleborate. Each of the two sects asserted an exclusive property in the temple and idol, with a right of management entirely uncontrolled Joint control imposed by the one sect upon the other was a suggestion foreig to the cases of both. It was the common position as pleaded that the period of association, so vaguely refarred to by both constants, in no way impinged upon the absolute and exclusive rights claimed by each of them. The association as put forward on both sides was no more than a temporary arrangement that could at any time be brought to an end by those who by invitation had brought it into being. The vital importance
(68)