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નયુગ
The Shatrunjaya Dispute. As seen by a European.
An echoe of the dispute between the Jain Community and the Palitana Durbar, about the Shatrunjaya Hill, has now come as far as Europe. That is right, and the cause in that manner rendered free from all contingent and local conditions, may be judged with impartiality.
Well, justice and reason are, without any doubt, on the side of the Jains.
The Jain Community has from centuries and centuries acquired on the Shatrunjaya Hill rights and privileges, against which the action of the Palitana Durbar seems to be unjustified.
Shatrunjaya is one of the most sacred places of the Jain Religion. The hill is covered with innumera. ble and magnificent temples, and every year thousands upon thousands of pilgrims resort to this holy of holies. So, it can reasonably be said: Without the Jain temples and the Sanctuaries, Palitana does not exist. For it is a matter of fact that pilgrims go to the Jain temples, and not to Palitana. Would the Hill with the temples fly away as in the tredy past so pilgrims left the way to Palitana. and every claim of the Palitana Durbar for a tax were vanished.
પાષ ૧૯૮૩
Such is the moral aspect of the question.
Moreover, there is a material aspect, concerning the ownership and possession of the sacred hill. It is a simple one: The Shatrunjaya Hili belongs to the Jains.
When I open Epigraphia Indiaca Vol. 11, No. 6th, I find, among the Shatrunjaya Inscriptions collected by the late Prof. G. Buhler, p. 50-59, No. 12, an important Prakrit inscri ption, dated Samvat 1650, i. e. 1593 A. D., in which I read that the Great Moghul Emperor Akbar granted the Shatrunjaya Hill to the Jains, in the year Samvat 1639, i. e. 1582 A. D.
Indeed, this mention is sufficient for my true opinion.
Gujarat was then a part of the Moghul Empire, and by the aforesaid grant of Akbar, ownership and possession of the Shatrunjaya Hill was recognised to the Jains.
Consequently the Palitana Durbar is not to claim any sovereignty and authority over the Shatrunjaya hill. He must only support Police in order to guarantee tranquility in the country and to secure protection, Watch and ward of the pilgrims,
The Palitana Durbar belongs to the clan of the Gohel Rajputs, whose earliest traces in the region are found
