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Jaina Community - A Social Survey
main concern was to show the antiquity of their castes and to narrate the achievements of their important castemen. Such books do serve their purpose because investigation is carried with so much zeal that every available information is tried to be included. Again, in recent times the Jainas have started a large number of newspapers - especially weeklies and monthlies - devoted to the many-sided development of the community. But, it must be admitted that a majority of these journals is concerned with religious and philosophical questions. They hardly discuss any social problem in all its aspects and try to collect all available information on certain problems which clamour for solution. Excepting a few journals like Jaina Hitaishi, Jaina Antiquary, Anekānta and Jaina Gazette, no other possesses that broad outlook which is so essential to view the social problems in a comprehensive manner. It is but natural that the Jaina journals do not directly contribute to provide us all possible information on a particular question. Nevertheless, their value as indirect source of information for certain social conditions cannot be minimised. All these different types of Jaina works have, as far as possible, been consulted and made use of in the foregoing chapters.
On the basis of information secured from several types of works mentioned above an effort has been made to present the available information on some important social institutions, customs and manners in a systematic way. But it cannot be ignored that a large number of such works and especially the District Gazetteers were published during the last two decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century and as such have become out of date to some extent. Due to the spread of education and the activities of various social organisations in the past few decades, there has been a consequent change in the social customs and manners of the Jainas. With a view to find out in what spheres and in what measure the changes have taken place it was undoubtedly necessary to note down the social conditions prevailing in the Jaina community at present. As a comparatively small community of Jainas has been spread over the length and breadth of India, it was not possible to get the requisite information personally. Therefore, a detailed questionnaires was prepared and its copies were sent to leading Jainas all over India. The scientific investigation of social conditions of Jainas was, I suppose, not under
