________________
81
THE FIRST WORLD TEACHER
the stench of the slaughter houses, the meatshops, stinking kitchens and reeking restaurants? Will you have them come down to ignorant priests, bloated self-complacent tyrants, lying statesmen, dishonest traders, or kings and emperors who respect neither their word nor their signatures? Devas have extremely delicate. senses, and the stench from the world's latrines and cess-pools must be quite nauseating to them. No one is expected to deliberately walk into an atmosphere reeking with filth and effluvium, unless for some good and adequate cause. The devas do come when there is an adequate cause, e.g., to do reverence to a WORLD TEACHER; but will not enter the atmosphere of corruption and filth otherwise !
Do the devas exist? Of course, they do. If they did not, the world's scriptures will not be filled with accounts of deva life! The Jainas, too, cannot all be deemed to have been hoodwinked throughout ages as to their existence. But have they not invented the story to impress others? But who could be impressed with such a fiction if totally false? They seek, in the first instance, only their own salvation, which they know will not be attained till they confess a lie like this and perform adequate penance ! Let us honestly recognize that there are many wonder
F. 6
