Letters to Vijayendrasuri

Author(s): Kashinath Sarak
Publisher: Yashodharma Mandir

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kind letters, the one dated September 13 and the other one October 21, 1922. It seems to me that a letter I wrote to you immediately after receiving the first one which was in London, can impossibly have reached you before you wrote the second one, nor have I any means just now to ascertain if it has done so.
The death of the Guru maharaj was a great shock to me. I got the first notice of it through Dr. Thomas and the 'Times' and afterwards got your letter telling me the exact time. You are very right in speaking about the consolation we may feel from the remembrance of his passing great and good deeds, the memory of which will certainly outlive the kalpa. For me he has always proved a most venerable and sincere friend, and I owe very much to his most kind help and assistance.
Still death is something very terrible and mysterious to the people of the west because they do not properly realise that death is nothing but life in a new form and because there seems to be nothing from which human spirit shrinks back so much as from the idea of complete annihilation. Even the very worst लौकायतिका : of which unfortunately Europe is full at present moment, my own country being no exception seem to be superstitious on that point.
You ask me if I am going to write something on the Guru Maharaj. I am afraid my feeble voice could not in any way contribute to the praise of a man whose greatness is truly everlasting. Anyhow, when last autumn in London, I wrote at the request of Professor Rapson, a chapter on "The Jain Communities in Medieval India an account which stops with the time of Kumarapala and the great Hemachandra, I summend up by saying at the Jain church has also later on continued to produce Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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