Proceedings and papers of National Seminar on Jainology

Author(s): Yugalkishor Mishra
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

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world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. It is, however, universally recognized that the universe in which we live has existed for an enormous period of time. To begin with, we sheltered in caves, wandered and hunted in forests and dressed in skins. Our reflexes and reactions were governed by our imagination, emotions, and passions. Systematic thinking is a comparatively later development in human experience. When we started living in small family groups, the need arose for the exercise of certain restraint upon our primitive passions and emotions. With agriculture came the worship of gods, without which crops would not ripen. Villages essential to agriculture, became towns and towns became cities. And it was in some of the ancient cities that we found the earliest traces of the role of the religions.
It was near about 3000 B.C. that some primitive civilizations appeared in different parts of what the historians have called the 'Old World'. The priests exercised great influence on the man. A rule of law and omen prevailed. In all these ancient civilizations - Mayan, Sumerian Egyptian, Mesopotaian cities had sprung up with temples, gods and priests, religious festivals and human sacrifices. In Egypt, the ruler became the living incarnation of the Chief God of the land and was known as the Pharaoh, the God King, However, the process of refinement of those primitive religions had also commenced during the period of the 'Old World' itself. Human sacrifice, for instance, had long since disappeared.
Another major contribution to religion has been of the Hebrews of Jerusalem. Their Old Testament came out with powerful ideas. Its foremost idea was that their God was invisible and remote. It was a Lord of Righteousness. All other religions had gods embodied in images that ived in temples. If the image was smashed and the temple razed, that God died out. The Jews gave a new concept of God, high above priests and sacrifices.
In India, the earliest civilization with traces of religion was in the Indus Valley (3000-2500 B.C.). Though, the concept of religion during this period is not yet clearly known, there is evidence of the people having developed cities and worshipped mother-earth and nature. Human sacrifice as also animal sacrifice was in practice. The next great religion to be founded was Hinduism, based on the Vedas and Upanishads. Its initial basis was the worship of nature in its various forms as all of their gods represented one or another phenomenon of nature. The religion was pre-eminently ritualistic. Significant changes followed in the later vedic period. The rituals become more elaborate and complicated. Performance