Book Title: Purusharthsiddhyupay English
Author(s): Amrutchandracharya, Ajit Prasad
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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Page 32
________________ ( 19 ) saved by establishing bakeries and restaurants, eating houses, and confectionaries. The remedy suggested is worse than the disease, even if the diagnosis be correct. Mass production of cooked food is really an evil which is responsible for many of the diseases and ill-health, so prevalent in the present age of expensive living and feverish activity. Simplicity of diet, simplicity in games, simplicity of amusements, simplicity of life in general were the special features of happy old India proverbially the land of Peace and Plenty, Strength ana Longevity. Notwithstanding the so-called progress in surgery, bacteriology, and vaccines, the fact remains that human longevity, human happiness, human health, human strength, and physical development has been going down from gene. ration to generation. The description of the statures of our ancestors as given in ancient books may be called myths and fictions, by the learned men of the present day, but it is a fact which must be admitted that the mummified bodies of the kings of Egypt and the fossils of ancient people are no dwarfish structures of the modern times. The descriptions given in the Illiad and the Odysey, in the Shahnama of Firdousi, in the ballads of Alha and Udal, and in the pages of Tod's Rajasthan prove to demonstration that our ancestors were certainly far superior to us in physical stature and prowess, in courage and endurance, in mental and spiritual power. In the Shahnama, Rustam is called bronze. bodied; and the warriors of olden times used to wear an armour the mere weight of which would be difficult for us to carry. The heavy swords some of which are exhibited in museums and armouries would not be easily lifted up by our strong men, what to say of their being wielded with such effect as to cut the warrior and the horse in twain. The wars, battles, and fights of our times are mere butcheries and wholesale destruction, without any element of personal courage and valour. Can one imagine a worse form of kil. ling than the bombing from aeroplanes, of hospitals, churches, prisons, cclleges, and cities, or the cannonading from long Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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