________________
92
THE JAINA GAZETTE Chairman of District Board Bijnour was unanimously elected President. Several resolutions dealing with the various ways and means of promoting Jiva Daya were adopted in the meeting held on the night of the 8th February 1927.
DIG. JAIN PARISHAD: PT. AJIT PRASADA'S SPEECH
The proceedings of the All-India Digambara Jaina Parishad began with the address of Pandit Ajit Prasada. Vakil, Chairman of the Reception Committee. The printed address consists of 15 pages. Pandit Ajit Prasada however spoke feelingly extempore, at considerable length, for over an hour and feeling pressed for time he omitted the reading of several pages of the printed address here and there.
GLORY OF LUCKNOW. While dwelling upon the ancient importance of Lucknow, the capital of the Province of Oudh, and now a first class rising town, he pointed out that the ancient Lakshmanapore, which through gradual corrupt pronunciation was changed into Lakhanpore, Lakhan (mau), and Lakhnau, and Lucknow, was a part of the town of Ayodhya, where according to Jain belief all the 24 Tirthankaras of every cycle of time were ever born, and shall ever be born. It was an exceptional defect of the present unfortunate cycle, the like of which occurs once in countless millions of years, that only five (Rishabha, Ajit, Abhinandan, Sumati, and Ananta) out of the 24 Tirthankaras were born in Ayodhya. It was an urgent religious duty of the Jains to pay due homage to Ayodhya, and to make it a paramount place of pilgrimage, only next in importance to Shri Sammed Shikhar-the Hill of Liberation, for all times and for all ages.
It was from Ayodhya, he pointed out, that the ancestors of the great king Raya Malla of Mysore, who belonged to the Ikshwaku clan of Shri Rishabha Nath migrated South and founded the Ganga Dynasty there, and helped in the propagation of Jainism in the South, and in the erection of the colossal image of Shri Gommateshwar (Bahubali) at Shravana Belgola, in the Hasan District of Mysore State an image 57 feet high hewn out of one
piece of solid rock there, which is the wonder of the world. He Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
