Jainism and Dr Gours Hindu Code

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 14

These are quite independent of the Brahmanical influence, though Brahmans are sometimes employed by Jainas both to in terpret their scriptures and to perform certain religious and tem. poral ceremonies for them. I do cot know what is there in this fact of employment of Brahmans by Jainas that might go to show that they are Hindu dissenters. Is it expected that the two communities that have existed side by side from times inmemorial in one and the same country should have had no intercourse between them? The fact is that Hinduism has always been almost exclusively the recruiting ground of Jainism, and that formerly intermarriages between Hindus and Jainas were fairly frequent. The children of such marriages would follow sometiines the one and sometimes the other of the two faith s, and at times their beliefs and practices would combine certain tenets of both of them which could not but be puzzling to the unenlightened foreigner and cven to a half-witted native. Besides this, in many places Jainas have been altogether swept away, but the Jaina temples are still to be found there. Brahman pujaris have to be engaged for such temples to keep up the daily worship. All this might not be known to a stranger in the early seventies, but a Hindu writer of our times cannot be allowed to plead ignorance of them, especially as it is his duty to study mate ters before expressing himself in print about them. Dr. Gour has the option of laying his head or his heart open to blame for his rash statements in the Hindu Code. The presumption is that he studied the subject well before he sat down to coin mit himself in writing. As he does not mention the recent authorities, and, ignoring the results now reached. preaches the old exploded theory of Jainism being a child of Buddhism and other falschoods, fault seems to lie with the heart. It is for him now to say whether he would like to sacrifice his head or his heart. It may be that after all the fault does not lie with his heart, but in that case he should come forward as a man and acknowledge his error, by substituting truth for the falsehood that now pisfigures the pages of the Hindu Code. HARDOI, 19th September 1921. CHAMPAT RAT JAIN, BAR-AT-LAW,