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enslavement. Mahavira took it upon himself to work out and propagate a veritable spiritual democracy in the form of Jainism. He delivered his message in the tongue of the people. He did not like the aristocratic aloofness and mystifying secrecy of the Brahmanical thinkers in matters religious and philosophical. There was no need of interpreters of the tongue of gods.
There can be no mediator between man and God. Mahavira popularized philosophy and religion and threw open the portals of heaven to the down-trodden and the weak, the humble and the lowly. To him spirituality was not the property of the privileged few, but a valued possession of each and all. It is only in the form of human being that the spirit can realise itself. Gods are inferior to the man of conduct. They symbolize only a stage in the development of the spirit. The final development, however, is possible only in the human form. The idea of an ever-free omnipotent Creator God and His incarnation is exploded as a myth, and the responsibility of creation is put on the shoulders of those who inhabit and enjoy it. Conduct is judged by the spiritual law: of ahimsā, perfect and absolute. The means is not justified by the end. It is perhaps with reference to these revolutionary ideals that a modern critic, informed with the faith in merciful God, has characterized Jainism as "a religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man and nourish vermio”. Philosophy, with Mahavira, is not an intellectual. system based on data supplied by psychological analysis, or a metaphysical speculation based on scientific investigation, but an all-comprehensive view based on spiritual realization wherein all other views find proper justification. These are, in brief, the general features of the message of Lord Mahavira.
The roots of Jainism can be traced out in that floating mass of Sramana literature which developed side by side with the ancient Vedic, and had, according to Dr. Maurice Winternitz, the following characteristic
