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FOUR AND TWENTY TIRTHAMKARAS
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another at the core, and present the same doctrine and teaching with Jainism.
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These World-Teachers, the Jinas, or Tirthamkaras, it is to be noticed, are not worship-seeking, psalm-loving, prayer-granting, wish-fulfilling deities. Their religion forbids all these things. They will tell you to go away elsewhere if you want boons from Them! They only have Their teaching to give, which at once demands the renunciation of all the good' things of the world, and will not, in any sense, encourage one's crying for them. Those who come to worship Them have to take leave of the world one day! There is no reason, then, why the Jainas should falsely insist on positing all the four and twenty Jinas! One World-Teacher would be quite enough for the Teaching. His example and footprints will be enough for men's needs! If the question was of granting boons or the prayers of the devotees, the larger the number of gods, the better it would be for mankind. But that is not the case here. As for the lustre of antiquity, the thirst for which is said to have moved the Jainas to invent the first twenty-two of the Tirthamkaras, the historicity of the first Holy Lord being established from the unassailable testimony of the Scriptures of Hinduism which comes from a rival faith, there could
