________________
PREFACE
Short story is one of the literary forms in which a writer expressess himself Jainism provides a philosophy which is difficult to the extreme and is intelligible to a handful of scholars To bring it home to the common man, spiritual teachers and scholars in different ages have used the medium of short stories of which there are hundreds, even thousands, scattered throughout the length and breadth of the vast agamıc literature and their commentaries. They have been produced in different ages by men with widely divergent experiences, but all against the backdrop of a common canvas which is Jainism. The analysis of personalities in these stories, the conglomeration of events, the clashes of selfish motives and interests, the display of bravery, the shape of endeavour, the depth of human life, the quagmire of meanness, fear, squalor, impatience, lethargy, imbalance, etc, which undermine the quality of life and place it on a very low pedestal, these and many such things dominate these stories They have been repeated innumerable times to refix the fallen, the misguided, the downtrodden to the right path which is the path of religion, the path meant for a pilgrim, and they are still not devoid of freshness and potentiality
To be the subject-matter of literature, it is not necessary that the life of men only with a golden tiage is deserving of consideration Even the life of men with dark patches provide an equally worthwhile material for the purpose. These two types of men may stand widely apart, they may, so to say, be called to belong to entirely different worlds, but that does not prevent them from receiving consideration at the hands of a creative artist. Whenever life, golden or dark, has some vigour 10 thinking, some 'capacity for acting, some message for others, it becomes a worthy material for the literary man's attention. Jaina
