What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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THE RIGHT SOLUTION It will, no doubt, be a big surprise to many of my readers to be told that Religion is a Science. Nevertheless the statement is a deliberate one. For all the real Founders of Religion were scientists in the truest sense of the term, and understood their subject in an exact, precise and definite way. There is a good deal of the true spirit of this science of Religion to be found in the Bible itself, though it is not likely that the untrained eye shall ever discover aught but dogma and myth within its four corners. The reason for this lies in the fact that the language of the Book is not the common parlance of a particular people or race of men, but a concealed script which effectively hides the true import of the teaching from the desecration of the profane gaze. Let me explain that the Bible, like the Vedas, the Koran, the Zend Avesta and many another sacred compilation on the Science of Life, is composed in the form of a series of elegant pictograms which have to be understood before the purport of the authors can be grasped, and the extent of their knowledge ascertained. I have called this secret script" Pictokrit” in one of my books on the subject, to distinguish it from Sanskrit (the polished tongue), on the one hand, and from Prakrit (the common parlance of men), on the other. The knowledge of this pictorial script has been lost almost entirely now, and it is, therefore, not surprising that people should have no true insight into the nature of religion today.
It is not difficult to prove these assertions. In every mystical religion the injunction not to read the scriptural text except under instructions from a qualified teacher was imparted as an article of faith. The Hindus forbade the reading of the Vedas to Shudras, who really were those not endowed with Brahmana intelligence, not those who belonged, in consequence of the incident of birth, to the lowest class of Aryan peoples, also termed Shudras. The Jews would not allow the 'chariot,' which meant metaphysics, to be studied except under special guidance; the Roman Catholics, too, do not recommend the reading of the Bible by the laity except it be explained by properly qualified preceptors. In the Bible itself one reads the injunction against the casting of pearls before swine, who are sure to trample them under foot and turn upon the instructor. The whole of the Sacred Book is couched not in words but in pictograms, each