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THE GREAT SCRIPTURES OF JAINS
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5. Jains, though small in number, have their hold all over India. They are a progressive community guided mostly by ascetics. A strange synthesis of wealth and devotion to asceticism can be discovered in the Jain laity. General Attitude : :
Indian systems of philosophy go from one extreme to the other regarding the authority of scriptures. On the one side there is the school of Mimāṁsakas giving supreme authority to the Vedas and admitting no interference by perception or inference in that sphere. On the other extreme is Cārvāka who relies on perception only. The Buddhist also does not admit the authority of scriptures. Jainism stands in the middle. It admits scriptures as an independent source of knowledge, and at the same time holds that they are based on experience. Of course, the experience of a layınan, whose judgement is always biased, cannot be accepted as the final truth, but that of one possessing full knowledge of the subject and at the same time rising above all pride and prejudice can be safely accepted as the final authority. The scriptures get their validity from persons of that type. Authorship :
According to Jainism the scriptures are neither eternal nor the words of God or a person deputed by God. As a matter of fact Jainism disagrees with the very idea of God or His messenger. It holds that every soul, when liberated from the bondage of Karma becomes Paramātman, the great soul. Scriptures are the records of the experience of those noble souls. There is one more difference between the Vedic and Jaina
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