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CHAPTER XI EPILOGUE
There was a time when, due largely to ignorance and apathy, certain wrong notions, misunderstandings and erroneous presumptions had become current, even in the circles of the supposedly wellinformed, regarding the genesis, antiquity, nature, scope and significance of the Jaina system of religion, thought and culture. Thanks to the patient studies and laborious investigations of a horde of learned Indologists, Western and Indian, the fog of ignorance and unwarranted prejudice has been considerably dispelled.
It is now no more necessary to prove that Jainism is an absolutely independent, highly developed, very comprehensive and ancient system, not unreasonably described as “the oldest living religion, or 'the earliest home religion of India,' it is, indeed, found to have been in existence, in one form or the other, or under one name or the other, since the very dawn of human civilization, continuing without break throughout the pre-historical (prewritten historical), proto-hisotrical and historical times.
The late Heinrich Zimmer, who is reputed to have been the greatest German Indologist of modern times, in his celebrated posthumous work, The Philosophies of India, conceded that “there is truth in the Jaina idea that their religion goes back to a remote antiquity, the antiquity in question being that of
