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स्मृतियों के बावायन में
RETURI
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JAINISM : AN OVERVIEW
Shri Rama Kant Jain
Editor : Shodhadarsh The system expounded and preached by the Jina, i.e., the conqueror of self, is known as Jainism and its adherents are called Jains. Jina is also known as Arahanta, the adorable one; Kevalin, i.e., possessor of absolute knowledge; Nirgrantha, the one without attachment; Shramana, the practiser of equanimity; and Tirthankara, the ford-finder, the one who establishes the path that takes people safely across the ocean of misery, the cycle of births and deaths, that is, the samsara, Consequently, Jainism has also been known as the creed of the Arahantas, Nigranthas, Shramanas or Tirthankaras. There have been innumerable Jinas or Arhantas, but only twenty four of them are designated as the Tirthankaras. The first in the series of the 24 Tirthankaras of the current cycle of time was Adinath Rishabhadeva. He belonged to remote pre-historic times and is believed to have been the first temporal as well as spiritual leader of mankind, who inaugurated the 'age of Karmabhumi'. The last three Tirthankaras were Arishtanemi, a cousin of Krishna Vasudeva of the Mahabharata fame (circa 1450 B.C.), Parshvanath (877-777 B.C.) and Vardhamana Mahavira (599-527 B.C.)
These Jinas or Tirthankaras were born as ordinary men, but they renounced the pleasures of the world and, by a course of self-discipline, asceticism and concentrated meditation, mastered the flesh, annihilated all the forces and influences obstructing spiritual development, and attained fullest self-realization and absolute perfection, bringing out to the full the divinity or godhood inherent in man. Then, for the well-being and happiness of all living beings, they preached what they themselves had practised and achieved. As such, Jainism is not a revealed religion and claims no divine origin.
Jainism starts with the scientific assumption that nothing is destructible and that nothing can be created out of anything which does not at all exist in one form or the other. It believes that the
