Vijaydharmasuri

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

Page 78

72 VIJAYA DHARMA SURI AS A MONK, looked upon with so much of suspicion. Being himself a strong partisan of mutual tolerance and cooperation, he has been endeavouring, since the very day of his initiation as a monk, to bring about a better understanding, not only amongst the people of his own faith, but also between the Jains and peoples of other communities, castes and creeds, seeking earnestly to remove all sectarian disputes and differences, all religious controversies and religious antagonisms of the sundered faiths which almost divide between them the Eastern world.
AN ADMIRER OF WESTERN CRITICAL METHOD
As a scholar, Vijaya Dharma Sūri is a great admirer of the Western critical method. He admires the comparative and historic method of study, which for over fifty years has shown itself prominent in the West, and which still more recently has been making its influence felt in our own country. Notwithstanding this, while not despising the conclusions arrived at by the patient and admirable researches and investigations of European scholars, he unhesitatingly puts them aside where they conflict with important facts preserved in history, or in ancient documents and imperishable records carefully stored up and not wholly inaccessible. But the most remarkable of all his accomplishments are his broadmindedness, which is more like a Western scholar's than a Jain monk's, and his wonderful sympathy for all men, irrespective of their caste, creed or nationality. He has made the