Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
of Knowing Lights. The same is the case with the word God, which, as the Imperial Dictionary shows, originally conveyed a pluralistic idea of the Deity.
Turning to Zoroastrianism, we find the same idea of a pluralistic Godhead. The Ahuras are many as well as one, according to the Holy Scriptures of the Parsis. Commenting upon the idea of God, Mr. E. Edward writes in the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (Vol. VI, pp. 291 and 292).
“The ahuras.........Shem to have gradually gained in prestige, and, apparently at a very early epoch, one of them had become the Ahura par excellence."
Mr. Edward's idea of a progressive monotheism is naturally based on the notion of evolution from a state of savageness to one of civilization ; but this is hardly tenable in the light of our knowledge, especially as there is a complete explanation of the idea of plurality inseparable from the nature of Divinity. We not only find the pluralistic conception of God in almost all the religions of the world, but also the significant number 24 expressly mentioned in several of them. Even Zoroastrianism, which undoubtedly inspired many a prophet of the Old Testament fame, gives the precise number of Gods as four and twenty. These are not to be confounded with purely mythological gods, which are mere personifications of the aspects of consciousness, as we saw in the analysis of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but are to be taken as explained in Jainism.
Modern writers generally fall into error in understanding the doctrines of religion, because they have little