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JAINA GAZETTE,
89 ordinary conditions their number should have suffered from the same causes which operated on the poor agriculturists. Why should their increase be only the average and not very much greater. These considerations will greatly increase the figure of our decay and will make an already frightful figure increasingly alarming. But we cannot ignore it. It has to be very clearly understood, if we really mean to save a community from perisbiog. Jaipa population 25% less than wbat it should have
been ! And that only on a moderate calculation ! Will the • leaders of the Jaina community look about and find a solution
of this vital problem ? Not all their antiquity, not all their wealth of philosophy, nor all their riches will avail. These cannot clieck their extinction. If they have any love for the progress towards the religion they follow, if they are at all anxious to see that the rich heritage of the great teachers should continue to live and benefit mankind, if they have ever had a desire that they should not disappear from the surface of this earth, it is the most important and sacred duty which they are called upon to perform to study this problem and find out and devise means, whereby this diminution may be arrested, whereby we may be able to divert from the path to extinction.
Having come so far, it becomes essential to briefly indicate the probable causes that bave led to this deplorable state of things. The census reports give prominence to the following :
(1) Plague. (2) Merging into Hindus. (3) Joining the Arya Samaj. (1) A Decaying religion. We shall take these one by one.
(1) Plague.-The last was an abnormal decade and plague was responsible for a large number of deaths. True, but so it was for all classes. There is no reason why plague should have chosen Jains more freels as its victims ihan otliers. The chances are that they were less affected by that epidemie, for they are richer and live in far less unhealthy places than do most of our
poor brethren. Making all allowance, plague, cannot account Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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