Jainism Precepts and Practice

Author(s): Puranchand Nahar, Krishnakant Ghosh
Publisher: Caxton Publications

Page 26

very strange. But when one iemembers that none of the systems of philosophy came to being all of a sudden, but they were more or less in extant in a still remoter age, and that this development into systems of philosophy means tveir embodiment in the forms of Sutras at different periods, things becomes easy to understand. For this is further corroborated if we interpret the religious upheaval in view of the fact that in the great religious Congress of the Indian saints and sages of yore in the 'Naimishäranya, when the authority of the Vedas were being made as binding upon the free thinkers of those days, those who left the Congrsss in silent protest against such actions of the Brahman-Rishis, were dubbed as Nastikas The word Nastıka (atheist) in the Indian scripture does not mean one who did not believe in the existence of God, but rather one who did not accept the infallibility and ultimate authority of the Vedas. Were it otherwise then the System of Sankhy in which Kapıl, like Laplace, did not care for getting in a God in the scheme of his universe, would not have been taken as one of the six theistic systems of philo