Jains Through Time

Author(s): Shilapi Sadhvi
Publisher: Veerayatan

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religions have adopted modern technology, adapting their literature for CD-ROM and the Internet, and are trying to present their philosophy in a more attractive and easily accessible manner, Jainism has not been able to keep up with them. I don't know whether it is the restrictions imposed by Jain canon law, or the fact that people have reneged on their responsibility to update and distribute the literature that has led to this tardiness. People are only now beginning to take up the task they should have begun long ago the dissemination of Jain teachings in a popular format. What can I say? Being history's witness, all I can do is plead that the precedent set by Siddhasen should not be ignored. If today some public-spirited Jain should embark on the work of presenting the Jain scriptures in a fitting form, let him not be denounced for violating tradition.
We have seen how Siddhasen was punished and banished from the Jain sangh for twelve years. He had never given in to the opinions of the traditionalists; he could not just blindly follow beliefs without testing the
The Jains through Time
truth of them first. I salute Siddhasen Diwakar and hope that luminaries like him will again rise in the heavens of the Jain tradition and guide the scattered Jain community to a new dimension where they will make a clear distinction between tradition and religion.
Acharya Siddhasen was held in the same esteem in the Shvetambar tradition as Samantbhadra Swami was amongst the Digambars. The doctrine of anekantvad, the axis upon which Jainism rotates, was an indivisible part of Samantbhadra's life and he weighed his every utterance upon the 'scales' of syadvad (the doctrine of qualified assertion). Whilst advancing the frontiers of Jain logic and nyaya (justice), Samantbhadra wrote the Aaptamimansa, giving the world of philosophy a priceless treasure. During the same period, the impeccable wisdom and irreproachable scholarship of Acharya Akalank, who conceived an original work on nyaya Akalank-nyaya-sidhanta - astonishes me. The treatises on nyaya, such as the Nyayavinishchaya, the Laghiyastraya and the Praman-sangrah, still remain most respected in
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