Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

Page 124

Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
124
orbits where orbits go in an integral function of n (n=1,2,3...).
Like wise there are other innumerable examples which are not consistent with modern science. The list is long and would need a separate treatise to discuss all of them but we have chosen only a few examples mentioned above to illustrate that many concepts need to be critically examined and revised. Many of these problems have been pointed out by several scholars, specially B.R.Singhvi in his book “Jain Dharma ki asangat batein (1943)".
We may reemphasise that these concepts have been compiled by later scholars, much after Mahlvir, and have been influenced by other prevalent ideas and are not a direct rendition of the Tirthankar's words.
One may wonder that if so many errors have crept in over the course of time, then what is the reliability index of scriptures. In this context, we want to mention that there indeed exist many valuable concepts in the scriptures and they represent a deep understanding of the universe, not withstanding the points made above. Without being influenced by the high precision of calculations and numbers given in the scriptures, each calculations must be critically examined in view of the large mass of the scientific knowledge now available before they are accepted as the words of the Enlightened. Some concepts may go beyond the modern scientific thought and their study may throw new light