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COMPARATIVE ANTIQUITY OF JAINISM
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the creeds that fostered nature-worship that of the Rig Veda would be taken to be the most ancient.
But this view is falsified by a scientific study of comparative religion. What this study has revealed clearly to me is that underlying this very seeming nature-worship lies hidden a scientific teaching and a doctrine which is indentical in all respects with the Teaching of the Jinas. The Sun for instance is embleinatic of the fulness of Knowledge, and not a gigantic moving star ; Indra is the soul embodied in inatter ; Agni is Tapascharana which leads to release from the bondage of karma and transmigration. Those scholars who took the gods of the Rig Veda to stand for nature powers did not have their attention drawn to the possibility of a secret religious or spiritual interpretation, and therefore merely put down the creed of the Vedas as a form of idolatry and superstition. I shall not attempt in this article to demonstrate the truth of my interpretatio:1, but ain content to refer the reader to my books in which the subject has been dealt with at great length and the legends and inyths of different countries and creeds have been interpreted in a scientific way. Here it is sufficient to state that my interpretations are in full accord with the true spirit of Hinduism and the elucidation of the Hindu Scriptures themselves.
I take it, then, that instead of being a mere ancient form of nature cult, the religion of the Rig Veda is revealed to be a scientific and systematic one, the most remarkable feature of which is its complete agreement with Jainism In different language, Jainisin and Hinduism are found to be teaching the same thing, though the one uses plain language and the other is concealed in disguise and mystifying thought
When did any of them really originate we do not know, if we leave out of consideration the evidence to the contrary furnished by the Jaina Books. The only material from
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