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INTRODUCTION
Tirthamkaras have only appeared amongst the Aryan races. They are Omniscient, all-conquering in the spiritual sense), and attain to all the most coveted Perfections that the imagination of man is able to conceive. On the attainment of Omniscience They commence their upadeśa (Instruction). Amongst the non-Aryans no one has ever clearly claimed that humanity has attained or may attain to Full Knowledge and Godhood. Their gods are all descended from heaven, ready-made, so to speak. They are mythological, without exception. It is not the accepted teaching of any of the non-Aryan Religions that man can and does become the all-knowing, all-perceiving, ever-blissful God. Indeed, they are all anxious to maintain the supremacy of a solitary imaginary god whom they regard as the creator and the manager of the world—a claim which they are, however, now abandoning in the presence of modern science, bit by bit, though not without a struggle, to be sure. The manmade Aryan Religion, like the modern science, refuses and has always refused to acknowledge the existence of a creative or managing god in the universe. It reduces everything to the iron laws of nature! Faith, observance, as well as emotion, and inner experience, all come thus under the jurisdiction of systematized
