Life in Ancient India as Depicted in the Jain Canons, with Commentaries: An Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey c5.s7.9

c5.s7.9

Jainism passed through many storms and upheavals from time to time from its birth, and yet it could survive and did not disappear from the soil of India like its sister religion Buddhism. The chief cause of this seems to have been the inflexible conservatism of the Jains in holding fast to their original institutions and doctrines. This is the reason, as Prof. Jacobi has pointed out, that although a number of less vital rules concerning life and practices of the monks and lay men may have fallen into oblivion or disuse, yet the religious life of the Jain community even now is substantially the same as it was two thousand years ago.⁹⁰