Jainism Christianity and Science

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: The Indian Press Allahabad

Page 55

KNOWLEDGE
4.
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but it is immediately said to be a personification. Jainism preserves the records of the lives of a number of souls like ourselves who have attained to this inconceivably great attainment, namely, Omniscience.
Perhaps modern Science will still shy at the above statement. Later on when it has realised its own insignificance, as compared with the grandeur 'and majesty of the Science of all Sciences, viz. Salvation, then its eyes will be opened.
Buddha was so struck with the incomparably matchless majesty of Omniscience that he devoted his whole life to its attainment. He had learnt from the example of the Jinas (Perfect Men) that Omniscience could be attained by the severest type of asceticism, and he forthwith applied himself to its attainment. And this is what he said when, after years of the severest ascetical practices, he failed to attain it: “ Not by this bitter course of painful hardships shall I attain to that separate and supreme vision of all-sufficing Aryan knowledge passing human ken, might there not be another path to enlightenment?” The adjectives used convey a very beautiful and exact idea of what he was trying to attain to. It was a separate kind of knowledge altogether; it was of the supreme type, there being nothing higher than that; it was all-sufficing, comprehensive and complete; it was like a vision and not the product of the senses; and, lastly, it could only be attained by the Aryans, not being open to those of low, undeveloped mentality. This was the kind of knowledge Buddha was trying to attain. Years of failure did not shake his faith in the possibility of its attainment. For him it was a l'eality, not, a mere theory; he had actually