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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
to contradict it, it would carry the point a long way in favour of Hinduism.
But we shall turn to the intrinsic evidence of the oldest Veda. The question is, what was the religion of the people who possessed only the Rig Veda and none of the subsequent accumulations and accretions of scriptural lore now possessed by the Hindus ?
The Rig Veda has been subjected to a great deal of criticism by friend and foe in recent times, but no one has found in its four corners aught but the worship of such things as the sun, clouds, fire and the like. There is no trace of the essentials of the Hindu Religion, as they are known to-day, in the hymns of the great Veda. Transmigration and Karma, renunciation and asceticism, and yoga are not to be found in the Rig Veda, or at least have to be spelt out with great labour from the text. The summum bonum --nirvana---itself is not present to the mind in the medley of what appears to be pure nature worship.
European scholars have in reality not found anything but superstition and idolatry in the poetry of the Rig Veda. If this view be taken to be true, then the purport of the Veda would hardly be termed religion by any thoughtful person, seeking to know what salvation implied and how was transmigration to be brought to an end, karma broken through and nirvana attained. As such it would not be worth the while of a Jaina to seek to establish the greater anciency of his own religion, which from the earliest times known has consistently taught the path to Bliss and Blessedness in nirvana by the destruction of karınas. For it is frankly admitted in Jainism that superstition and Enlightenment are coeval. Indeed the Light' may disappear from time to time and reappear again, but superstition in one form or another is more or less continuous. The positiou would then simply the this, that among religions Jainism would be the oldest, but amongst
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