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different aspects of the Jainas as a Community. Obviously such research studies on Jainas are becoming popular with scholars both in Western and Eastern countries along with scholars in India. Moreover, it is gratifying to observe that these research studies are being planned and executed not only by the Jainologists but also by specialists in several social sciences like Sociology, Social Anthropology, Social History, Social Psychology and Social Demography. In addition, in recent years experts in different disciplines like Social Philosophy, Social Ethics, Social Environment and especially Comparative Religion have started to take keen interest in the scientific study of social conditions among the Jainas from their particular specific points of view. Furthermore, during the last few decades there has been a great stress laid on the scientific studies of Mino. rities of racial, religious, linguistic and other kinds spread in different parts of the world and this has attracted largely the attention of the scientists and the administrators towards the study of Jainas as a typical and significant religious minority in India, In view of this spirit in the social studies of Jainas carried out in the recent years by scholars in several disciplines in different parts of the world, it is quite appropriate that a separate section in 'Jaina Sangha and Society" has been formed in this "first All India Conference of Prakrit and Jaina Studies" so that scholars in this field can conveniently come together and exchange their views and findings and can thus give further encouragement to undertake similar studies on a large scale in the near future Emergence of the Studies on Jaina Society' :
The studies on Jaina Society as a part of Jainological Studies have no doubt emerged during the last forty years but they have, in fact, been in line with the development of studies generally termed as Oriental Studies. This term "Oriental Studies" was applied from the middle of the nineteenth century by the Western Scholars from England, France, Ger. many and other countries of the West to the studies of different aspects of culture of Eastern Countries from the Turkey and Egypt at one end to India and China at the other end. But soon it was realised that the field of Oriental Studies was extremely wide and hence Oriental Scholars started to delimit their studies to one particular country in the East like Turkey, Egypt, India or China. Naturally from such concentration of studies of particular countries, there developed branches of Oriental
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