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APPENDIX B.
95
of the Jaina community and their creed. Another consideration which induces me not to attach great ralue to the judgment in the I. L. R. 3 AIL. 55, is that this case tras brought somershere in the serenties of the last centary The Jaina community stas cortainly in a more backtrard and disorganised condition then than it is not. The Bharattarshya Digambara Jaina Vahasabha thicb is registered and organised representatire of all the Jainas of the Digambar sect in India, had not yet come into existence. Jainism itself was almost entirels ignored. It was grossly misunderstood and misrepresented eren by people who might have been expected to knot hetter. Learned Purants, like Mr. Bath of Paris, held Jainism to be an offshoot of Buddhism and much later in date than the gospel of the Buddha. The personality and the rery historicity of Lord Mahnrira, the last Tirthankara of the Jainas, tras depied. It was considered to be an error and a heresy to hold that Lord Jahnrira existed at all. A historian of the repute of Sir Roper Lethbridge taught onr schoolboss in his Hislory of India that Jainism tas a compromise between Braumanism and Budabisun and that it took its birth in India somerhere in the Oth century, about the time of the great Vedantist, Shankaracharya. It was not until 1884 tbat & redoubtable scholar, Dr. 8. Jacobi, took up the cadgels on behalf of this moch-maligned and misrepresented creed and prored, according to the most modern methods of critical research in History and Antiquity, that Lord Vabarira was an independent and actual propbet of the Jainas, that Jainism tas older than Bnddhism, that the Jainas of the pre-Budhistic days trent under the name of the Nigganthas or Nirgtanthas, and that Lord Blabarira was preceded by Lord Parsranath (after whom the greatest acred hill of the Jainas in Hazaribag, in Bihar, is called), who attained Nirrana or salvation in 776 B. C. The conservative scepticism of scholars still prerented them from accepting all these results of historical research, till by dint of
