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[VI]
modern languages developed, they constantly turned to Saṁskṛta and Prāksta for guidance in strong and graceful expression, for interesting stories and trenchant ideas. These modern languages enlarged their vocabularies by incorporating Samskrta and Prāksta words into their languages.
In fact, in most of our intellectual and spiritual activities, in philosophy and religion, and in many other disciplines, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our ancient India whose influences are the strongest and richest, particularly in the domain of philosophy and spiritual achievements.
Coming to Jainism it can be said that for the last 2500 years, the Jainas have contributed so much to every sphere of intellectual life of India - be it philosophy and religion, history and culture, language and literature, cosmogony and cosmology, art and architecture, and even in framing the nature and habits of the Indian people at large - that it is impossible to think of Indian history and civilisation without considering the Jaina materials that are available now. In philosophy and religion, the contributions of the Jainas have opened up a new phase of human ideas and thoughts. The scholastic metaphysics and logic of the Jainas, like other branches of Indian philosophy, are admirable. Though lots of Jaina works have come up from amongst the debris of antiquity, there are still many more to be written than what has been done before. For the last over one hundred and fifty years scholars like H. T. Colebrooke, A. Weber, E. Windisch, H. Jacobi, G. Bühler, Mrs. S. Stevenson, H. Glasenapp, S. Mukherji, N. Tatia, R. Williams and many others have built up the edifice of Jainistic studies which have been lying hidden for a long time from the eyes of the scholars in the abyss of edacious time, and these scholars by their reveted thoughts and trenchant ideas reoriented and modified the understanding of the Truth, as a sequel to which, the Jaina thoughts and ideas became a part and parcel of popular Indian belief. Shri Dulichand Jain's Pearls of Jaina Wisdom is a good
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