Book Title: Tulsi Prajna 1996 01
Author(s): Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Page 227
________________ 216 TULSI-PRAJNA group. Defferences we witness among different races are mainly the result of the variances in environment. That certain races are more advanced than others does not necessarily mean they are wiser or stronger. All the races did not have the favourable conditions for cultivation and taming animals. Metals were not equally accessible to all of them. Such factors played a decisive role in creating cultural differences among the races. Differences in the shape and size of nose and skull, in the colour of eyes etc. are the traits that distinguish one ethnic group from the other. But there is nothing to prove that they have any co-relation to the type of social organisation a particular group evolves. 2. That the Aryans had no caste-distinctions or little if at all when they came to India, does not conclusively prove an alien influence. What it really shows is that the caste distinctions in India appeared independently of other Aryan people. 3. Less rigidity of caste rules and untouchability in the so-called predominantly Aryan regions like Punjab does not prove non-Aryan influence either. People in the regions like Punjab use more Arabic and Persian words while the popular speech in the "non-Aryan” Bengal and South is more Sanskritised. Are we to conclude, therefore, that the Indo-Aryans spoke Arabic and Persian and Sanskrit was borrowed from the non-Aryans ? It is the non-Aryan South which has preserved the tradition of teaching and learning to this. day-something unknown in Punjab etc. It is Bengal and the South that resisted the Arabic script so forcefully. The reason is Punjab and other predominantly Aryan regions were affected by recurring foreign invasions. So the absence of caste rigidities in Punjab etc. is not explained by the preservation of Aryan heritage in its pure form. Rather it is explained by the social upheaval caused by foreign invasions. It is admitted in the same book by the same author: "The Sikhs were always at war with the Muslims, but they learned how to worship from them. The Sikhs introduced the worship of the Grantha Sahab instead of the worship of Koran... The Muslims do not keep their heads uncovered while praying to God, the Sikhs learned to cover their heads at the time from them while fighting against them. Nobody can enter into a gurudwara today with his head uncovered."27 "Rajputs too fought against the Muslim emperors ever but adopted the system of purdah as a mark of nobility and learned to take opium from them" 28 Both the instances refer to the period of the Muslim rule but the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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