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A CRITIQUE
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insights One would search in vain for the use or description of scientific apparatuses in the Jain canonical literature because these were not developed at that time What then was the source of their knowledge and spiritual insight? It appears that the capacity of profound thinking (resulting from severe austerities), uninterrupted concentration of thought and meditation enabled the ancient sages to acquire transcendental and extrasensory perceptive powers The practice of meditation- -DHYANA was accorded a very high priority in their daily routine and deep concentration became an easy and
effortless achievement It has been claimed that most difficult problems can be solved by the process of meditation, and it is not very difficult for us to accept this claim as we know that the modern great philosophers, scholars and mathematicians were nobodies if they were not great thinkers
In the mediaeval period, there flourished many Jain scholars, whose interests were wholly literary or spiritual Even though they contributed a great deal in the fields of mathematics, logic and perhaps astronomy, their contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge was almost negligible In the meantime, modern sciences had become firmly established by a wholly independent growth in the West And now, science is almost wholly put to a material end, thereby removing any plausible basis for comparison between modern science of the West and traditional knowledge of the East It is therefore extremely difficult to adjudge how much scientific the Jain thinkers have been or how far from it But the Jain scholars did develop an adequate methodology and an admirable terminology for the presentations of their findings which one is free to accept or reject
