Jainism

Author(s): Vallabh Smarak Nidhi
Publisher: Vallabh Smarak Nidhi

Page 59

unthinking masses and infused sense and light were there had been more of superstition and ignorance. The holy Jain saints with a bold and revolutionary spirit explained in common langage the truths, which were jealously guarded by others. Their soothing spirit and magnetising influenence, pentrated into the lowest of society and raised the moral and spiritual tone of the masses. Their rules of ascetic life required them not to stay at one and the same place, for more than prescribed days and therefore they had to move from place to place. This wandering life of theirs proved very useful in disseminating the principle of morality in different places and in watching over the lines of education. The influence of their high virtues of feellow-feeling, compassion. selfsacrifice, voluntary poverty and indifference to Parigraha in any shape, has done incalculable good to the Jain society. The proportion of jail going population of a society is a sure index to the ethical condition of a society. From the Jain Administratien report of Bombay of the year 1901, we find that out of 7355 Jains only one man was sent to prison in that year. This shows that the Jains stand highest in morality, and that Jainism has made its followers the