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PROLOGUE
We are living in the age of science and technology. The miraculous advancement in science and technology has provided us light-legged means of transportation and communication. As a result physical distance has no bars to meet the people of different nations, cultures and religions. Now our world is shrinking and it has become a global village. Due to this Jain community has also been spread throughout the world. In earlier times Jains were limited to India only. Unlike Buddhism, Jains never tried to spread their religion outside the greater India. In the ancient Indian history, we have only few references regarding spread of Jainism outside the India, which show that in the East it was spread up to Suvarnadvipa i.e. Jawa and Sumatra, in South up to Sri Lanka, in North up to present state of Nepal and its joinin boundaries of Tibet, in the West present Pakistan and Afghanistan and their adjoining boundaries. All these were parts of the greater India and thus Jainism never crossed the boundaries of greater India in ancient times. But at present it has spread all over the world.
From the point of view of new literature on Jainism, the 19th and 20h centuries have been of great importance. In this period, some new Jain works were written as well translated in English, German, French and other languages, which definitely facilitated the people of different nations to learn about the basic concept and principles of Jainism as well as its rich cultural heritage. It is true that some foreign scholars, who visited India, experienced directly the 'Jain way of living' but it was limited to very few scholars. It is only the 19h century when for the first time Jains moved to Africa and England for their livelihood and came in the direct contact of the nationals of these countries. Though Virchand Raghavji Gandhi visited America and attended the "Parliament of World Religions" at Chicago in 1893 and represented Jainism. But at that time there were no Jains in America. From the second half of the 20th century Jain scholars, engineers, doctors and other professionals made their entries in countries like
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