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20
FOUR AND TWENTY ELDERS*
- C.R. Jain
The Jaina tradition takes us back to a time when the earth was a glowing mass, and before rains had begun to descend and waters to gather into rivers and lakes and rivulets on its surface. There was no vegetation on its face then; and the sun and the moon and the stars were still invisible owing to the dazzle of its own glare. Yet life existed on it, and lived and flourished on a kind of spontaneous product of clayish nature, that was eatable and dainty, and available in great variety and abundance both.
The man who lived so far back would naturally be different in bodily composition from us; and it is inculcated in the tradition concerning them that they attained to incredible heights and longevity. Gradually rain-clouds began to form themselves in the atmosphere, and rains, too, began to descend on the earth. It was in the time of the twelfth Manu that this happened for the first time Rishabha Deva, the Founder of Jainisrn, came a little later. From that time the element of heat came to be gradually replaced with that of water in the bodies of living beings. It is a pity that the description is so meagre and gives us no insight into the nature of their glands, especially the pituitary body, on which depends the stature and growth of individuals. But it is obvious that if those men differed from us in important particulars they must have had bodies very differently composed from ours. It is a curious circumstance that the size of the living beings which people the
* The Change of Heart, Delhi, 1939.
The Change of Heart, Champat Rai Jain 'Vidhya Varidhi, Bar-at-Law' 1939, Delhi, pp. 116-120. (The book (The change of heart) is the third volume of the “Essays and Addresses" based on the lectures delivered by C.R. Jain before English Club at Alassio (Italy)]
