Book Title: Mira and Mahavir or Belief in God
Author(s): N V thadani
Publisher: Hindu College Delhi

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Page 14
________________ viii constitute a great quest of truth from Nature to Nature's God. All knowledge, again, is a search for Truth from denial and doubt to partial or completo certainty. Even so we begin with a denial of God in the Sankhya; pass on to a doubt in Nyaya; affirm his partial existence in conjunction with Nature in the Vaiseshika. give him the principal place in Yoga; and hold that there is nothing but God in Vedanta. The idea of the different systems of Religion is exactly the same. We rise from denial and doubt in Jainism and Buddhism to partial belief in Saivism; and Vaishnavism culminates in the pure monistic belief in God. What then is the difference between Christianity and Islam on the one hand, and the systems of Hindu Religion,- specially the monistic school of Vaishnavism-on the other? All these enjoin belief in God; but whereas belief in God is an article of faith, not reason, in Christianity and Islam, in Hinduism we slowly rise, by means of our reason, from pure denial to a conception of God as a Law, and then as an actor and creator of the world,- till in the end we hold that there is nothing but God in the universe. And so the systems of thought which are said to constitute Hinduism, are interconnected with one another, and comprehend the entire range of thought from atheism to agnosticism, thence to dualism, qualified monism, and pure monism of God. And it is for this reason that they are called Darsanas or points

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