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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
as Shri Rishabha Deva Bhagwan even preceded the Vâmana avatara, he must have flourished still earlier. * Thus, there can be no doubt but that the composition of the Vedas took place a considerable time after the establishment of Jainism in the present cycle of time.
The Hindus naturally claim a divine authorship for their Vedas, but the nature of the hymns shows that the claim is unfounded. Revelation, in its true sense, means either (a) the discovery of truth by one's own soul by means of direct perception, called kevala jnâna (omniscience), or (b) the statement of pure truth by an omniscient Teacher (Tirthamkara) prior to His leaving the world to enter nirvåna. The Vedas are said to belong to the latter type, since they are described as śruti, i, e., that which is heard. It is, therefore, necessary to ascertain the nature of the propounding source of true śruti or scripture. The first thing to be borne in mind in this connection is that speech-whatever be its form and whether it be voluntary or not-is a kind of material movement, and arises by the operation of mental or emotional impulses on the particles of subtle matter in the first instance. The disturbance is then communicated
* The fact that the vedic text is couched in mythological langu. age does not impair the accuracy of this inference, since the vedic mythology, like that of the epics and puranas, has, in many instances drawn the raw material of its personifications, metaphors and alle gories from well known facts and events of history. The Jaina puranas prove the historicity of both Shri Rishabha Deva Bhagwan and Vishnu rishi, who came to be known as the Vamana Avatara, because of his relieving, on one occasion, the suffering of certain ascetic saints, by contracting his body to a dwarfish size and then expanding it to incredible dimensions, with the aid of an occult power acquired by the performance of austere asceticism.
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