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- Contribution of Jainism to Philosophy, History and Progress and have no life. Vegetables, trees, fruits, have life. When dried or cooked there is no life in them. Worms, insets, fish, birds, animals, human beings, are all living beings. There are living beings on stars and planets, and even beyond the starry region. 'Life' is only an abstraction. It is not something concrete, superadded to the constituent elements of living beings. It is a generalization, derived from our observation of varying modes of behaviour of such living beings. The stage of actual development of one living being different from: that of another, living beings are classified in many ways in the Jaina philosophy. The simplest classification is based on the number of organs of sense they have developed.
Besides the category of living beings, there is one of inanimate substances. These are matter two kinds of ether (one, the fulcrum of motion, the other, the fulcrum of rest) and space. We must bear in mind that ether and space are not matter in natural death. The preaching of that grand principle has almost entirely superseded Brahminical sacrifices of animals.
In literary activity, Jainas have held a prominent position. Their scholars and philosophers have composed voluminous works on philosophy, logic, comparative religion, grammar, prosody, mathematics, lexicography, music, history, biography, astronomy, etc., besides works on their ceremonial and ritualism. Out of the many authors, only a few need he mentioned here. Bhadrabahu Suri composed 'Niryuktis" on ten works of the Jaina canon, also a work on astronomy. Devarddhi Gani, the Kshamashramana, is the redactor of the sacred canon; 980 years after Mahavira, the last Arhat, Devardhi, seeing that all the canonical works were being lost in course o£ time, caused them to be written down. Before that time the sacred literature was handed down from master to disciple without the help of books. Siddhasena, the Divakara, converted King Vikramaditya to Jaiuism, and is the author of many philosophical works.
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