Religion and Philosophy of the Jainas

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Jain International Ahmedabad

Page 45

12 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS and of the view of life taken by the Hindus. This was when I was eight years old. Twenty years after that, only the other day I happend to read one of Professor Max Muller's works, and I was much more astonished to see that he also expressed himself in prettyrly the sanie lems. Here are his views : "Our idea of life o warth has alwa; been that of a struggle for existence, a strugle for power and dominion, for wealth and enjoyment. These are the ideas which dominate the history of all nations whose hisiory is known to its. Our own sympathies also are almost entirely on that side. But was placed on this earth for that one purpose only ? Can we not imagine a different propose, particularly under conditions such as existed for many enturies in India are nowhere else ? In India the necessarie i fe were few... those which existed were supplied without such exertion . je part of man by a bountiful Nature. Clothing scanty is it was, was easily provided. Life in the open air or in the bades of the forest was more delightful than life in cotta onlaces. The danger of inroads froin foreign countries was perer dreamt of before the time of Darius and Alexander, and then on one side only, on the North, while more than a silver streak protected all around the far stretching shores of the country. Why should the ancient inhabitants of India not have accepted their lot ? Was it so very unnatural for them, endowed as they were with a transcendent intellect, to look upon this life not as an arena for gladiatorial strife and combat, or as a market for cheating and huckstering, but as a resting place, a mere waiting room at a station on a journey leading them from the known to the unknown ? But exciting for that very reason their utmost curiosity as to whence they came and whither they were going. So in those palmy days of India a large class of people, not only the priestly class but the nobility also, not only men but women also never looked upon their life on earth as something real. What was real to them was the invisible, the life to come. What formed the theme of their conversations, what formed the subject of their meditations was the real that alone lent some kind of reality to