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4: PART V
GUIDELINES TO MAHAVIR-DARSHAN
Nayas. Thus the Nyaya-Vaisesika system, which regards the diverse traits of a thing as numerically and qualitatively different from one another and also from the substratum on which they rest, belongs to the type known as Naigama Naya or the pantoscopic approach to reality. Similarly the Vedantist, who accepts existence as applying only to the One Reality and dismisses the diverse characters as unreal appearances, affiliates himself to the type called Sangraha Naya or the way of synthetic approach. In the same way that system which approaches reality from the analytic point of view may be called Vyavahara Naya. Jainism classifies similarly the other types of thought, whose advocates all expose themselves to the charge of extremism and fanaticism, in so far as they assert their several findings to be exclusive or mutually incompatible. The Jaina philosopher regards them all as only partially true and attempts to synthesize all these glimpses into one comprehensive vision of the whole reality.
A common thread thus runs through the Jaina religion, moral code and philosophy. And this continuous development of the religious experience contributed much to the spiritual, moral and intellectual culture of our country.
The Jains played a very important part first in the development of the ancient Prakrit lauguages, as also of the Dravidian languages of the South : Tamil and Kannad. Somewhat later they adopted Sanskrit to elucidate the contents of the original Prakrit canon and gradually produced a vast Sanskrit literature comprising valuable works on almost all subjects of the day : philosophy, logic, grammar, lexicography, poetics, politics, folk stories, mathematics, astronomy and astrology. Indian literature in all its branches is thus indebted to the achievements of Jaina authors.
As regards the Prakrit canon, it can be compared to the Pali Fitika of the Buddhists in respect of subject matter, method of exposition of cardinal tenets, compilation of religious and philosophical doctrines and evidence which it affords as to the social, political and economic conditions of ancient Ind.a.
The Sanskrit literature of the Jainas contains a number of the leading philosophical and literary classics of India's ancient heritage.
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