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admitted to be one of the most ancient religions of the world. The attempt to mislead the rising young generation of India and to create false notions in their mind, derogatory to Jainism is simply unpardonable. The first impressions on young minds are deep and difficult of being removed. If the authors bad really taken the trouble of reading even what the publishers now refer to, and were not possessed of any bias or prejudice or religious bigotry, they would certainly and naturally have written in a different strain.
Ordinarily speaking, when one attempts to describe the religious beliefs of any class of people, he should throughly study their religious books and base his description upon what is stated in those books. It may be sometimes permissible to criticise such beliefs, but such criticism should bo reserved for special treatises, and is wholely unjustifiable in an elementary historical reader. Again if the authors did not care to study Jain religious books, which have been published in large numbers, and contented themselves with reading only what the publishers refer to, they should have found no difficulty in stating that "the Jains believe that their religion is eternal, and that it was preached and promalgated at various periods in every cycle of time by 24 deified saints whom they called...... Tirthankaras”. Some historians however regard Mahavira as its founder, and others think
