Jainism Christianity and Science

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

Page 97

FOUR AND TWENTY ELDERS
85
Persians, who foretold the Saviour's birth, and came into the land of Judæa guided by a star. The Indian gymnosophists are also in the number, and the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two classes, some of them called Sarmana (or Samanæi) and others Brahmins. And those of the Sarmanæ who are called Hylobii Deither inhabit cities, por bave roofs over them, but are clothed in the bark of trees, feed on nuts, and drink water in their bends. Like those called Encratites in the present day, they know not marriage nor begetting of children ... Some, too, of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha; whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they bave raised to divine honours."-(Clement) A.N.C.L. vol. iv. p. 398.
Gymnosophists are the Jainas; they were known as gymnosophists to the ancient Greeks and others. Philo Judæus refers to them, mentioning one of them, Calanus, by name (see Yonge's Philo Judæus, vol. iii. p. 526).
"... men who have been made like the angels through their excellent course of life; them also must I bring, and they will hear my voice, and there shall be one fold, one shepherd."-A.N.C.L. vol. xvi. p. 502.
"For, since the present world is female, as a mother bringing forth the souls of her children, but the world to come 18 male, as a father receiving his children (from their mother), therefore in this worla there come a succession of prophets, as being sons of the world to come, and having knowledge of men."-(Clementine Homilies) A.N.C.L. vol. xvii. p. 38.
As for Science, it knows nothing about omniscient man bàving graced our earth in the past; it only knows of a few gorillas, whose descendants it imagines we human beings are. Science is respectfully invited to make a thorough investigation into the mystery' of those twenty-four Omniscient Ones in whose existence the whole of humanity believed in the past, and to suspend.its judgment until it has fully investigated the statements already made and those to be made in this book.