Vijaydharmasuri

Author(s): A J Sunavala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 64

XIII
THE JAIN ACHĀRYA AND WESTERN
SCHOLARS
AND
INSTITUTIONS OF PUBLIC UTILITY IN BENARES, AGRA
AND PALITANA VIJAYA DAARMA SŪRI now thought of leaving Benares, in order to continue his beneficent mission of preaching and propagating the religion of the Jina in other places. Before he began his tour, he caused a Pashushālā, hospital for animals, to be founded in Benares, in order to relieve the sufferings of the poor dumb world. Towards the end of the year 1911 he left the city, accompanied by his monks, and proceeded towards Gujarat. Making his way through Ayodhya, Fyzabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Kanauj, Farrukhabad, Kayamganj and Firozabad, and, preaching in all these places the precept of Ahimsā, he reached Agra, before the rains of the year 1912. Here he spent the Chaturmāsa, the four months of the rainy season, caused a library to be opened and a free dispensary to be started, the funds for both the institutions having been provided by Sheth Laxmi Chanda, a wealthy and charitably disposed merchant of the place. It was also during this halt at Agra that he caused a Gurukula, an institution in the form of a boarding-school, to be opened at Palitana in Kathiawar, and called it the Yashovijaya Jaina Gurukula.