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APPENDIX
183
destroying the whole chain at once. It follows from this that Jainism is not a religion which may be said to stand in need of periodic additions and improvements, or to -advance with times, for only that can be enriched by experience which is not perfect at its inception.
To revert to early Hinduism of the Vedic period, we find nothing approaching the systematic perfection of Jainism either in the Rig or the remaining three Vedas whose authors merely content themselves by singing the praises of mythical gods--Agni, Indra and the like. Even the doctrine of transmigration which is an essential part of religion, in the true sense of the word, has to be spelt out laboriously from the mythological contents of the Vedas, and, as European scholars have pointed out, is only directly hinted at in one place, which describes the soul as 'departing to the waters and the plants.'
We have thus no alternative left but to hold that early Hinduism, if taken in its exoteric sense, differs from the creed of the Tirthamkaras as much as any two dissimilar and disconnected things can differ from one another ; and it is impossible to regard the Vedas as the mother of the Jaina Canon. Indeed, the truth seems to lie the other way, for if we once disabuse our minds of the idea of revelation being the source of Vedas, and can manage to understand the true teaching underlying its emblematic hymns, we can easily perceive the growth of Hindu mysticism from a source outside its own domain.
It has already been observed that neither the conception of the great Ideal of Nirvana, i.e., perfection and bliss, nor the doctrine of transmigration of souls, with the
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