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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wonderful Feats of Memory
The late Professor Max Muller, in his “Psychological Religion" says :- "To those who are not acquainted with the powers of human memory when well disciplined, or rather when not systematically ruined, as ours has been, it may almost seem incredible that so much of the ancient literature of India should have been composed and should have survived during so many centuries, before it was finally consigned to writing." It is difficult to believe in the wonderful possibilities of human memory, as our modern psychology does not teach any method of cultivating this faculty to an extent which may call miraculous. Now and then we see advertised in literary magazines methods of cultivating memory by artificial means. Oftentimes, they are found to be more tedious than the ordinary methods of repetition. And when one tries the advertised method for some time and fails to accomplish anything he begins to doubt the possibility of training the memory to such an extent that he could perform wonderful feats.
Many wonderful instances of the feats of memory are forthcoming in the history of India. Pre-eminently the literature of the Jaina sect, an old religious cult, has chronicled many such instances. Hemachandra, the famous Jaina encyclopedist, is one of them. He lived in the middle of the eleventh century. He was
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