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भ० महावीर स्मृति-पंथ!
which heralded a nero era in the field of Indian philosophy. It is indeed a matter of common knowledge that the Jainas reached a very high sense of perfection in the field of logic by their introduction of the doctrine of Syädväda. Besides assisting in the development of deductive and inductive thinking, it helped immensely in the cultivation of an impartial and all. round approach to every object or problem. In fact, Anekantapäda' or the method of all-sided approach was a principle unknown to many other systems Hegel's idea of the identity of being and non-being comes very near our branch of logic.
9. The singularity of Jainism is to be found yet in another field which has escaped the attention of some Western and Eastern scholars. The rationalistic idealism of the Jainas existed not only in their metaphysics but also in their ethical teaching. The doctrine of Karma 18.common to all religions in India but a distinct stamp of scientific and analytical classification is to be found in the Jain interpretation of it. The performance or the omission to perform certain rituals 19 regarded as a source of Karma amongst the Brahmins The Jains however recognised the responsibility of each being for his or its karma. While other philosophies attributed the various antecedents and accidents of life to a divine power far beyond the control of hurgan vision and thought, Jainisin emphasised that the law of cause and effect permeated not only the physical aspect of our existence but also the psychical or mental make-up of all souls. The contact of matter with the soul produces new energies which in relation to their space, duration, intensity and nature produce myriads of changes in the living beings. The characteristic which any being possesses at any given moment is the natural result of the various karmas or energies which are generated by his past and present contact with the atoms of matter. Every moment a person attracts to himself and assimilates different particles or atoms of matter and it is common experience that accumulation of matter means some change. This lay of moral causation brings about into existence different waves of feeling, either of sorrow or joy, merit or demerit and the attainment of complete perfection necessarily means a liberation from the foreign matter of karmic atoms It is an imperceptible victory of the Jain doctrine that modem science and rationalism have demonstrated beyond doubt that this explanation offered by Jainism was 'true and conformable to known theories of acceptable doctrinaire.
10. It is common experience that the ideal of original founders often lose their spirit and retain only the form with the progress of times. The selected class which is first intended for safeguarding the rights of the masses ordinarily appropriates to itself ali pomes and position which such selection brings with it. That is what exactly happened in the case of Brahmins To them was first assigned the spiritual guardiansbip of the other three classes : but as times went on the intellectual field was so much
