Did you know that the Jains believe that the earth is flat and not a sphere? I am not making this up. I visited a Jain temple called Soni Ji Ki Nasiya temple in Ajmer and when I saw what was written there I was surprised.
That’s not it. It is believed that the earth is stationary. The sun, moon and stars move.
Flat earthers only assume that earth is flat. If you found them to be absurd you should hear Jain description of the universe. It’s even more crazy. Earth being flat is just a starting.
The universe is considered to be in the form of a person standing. the top is broad, the hips are narrow and the legs are set wide apart. The middle part is called Madhya Loka. In the middle there are lot of oceans and islands and one such island is called Jambu Dweep. This is where the earth is and people live.
In the middle of Jambu Dweep there is huge mountain of Gold (why not some other cheap metal like Aluminium?) called Mount Sumeru.
There are two suns, two moons and two sets of stars that we all see. All of the move around Mount Sumeru.
We see one of them each day. Since they are similar and twins we can’t find the difference.
And all is this is not just theory. There are people who truly believe in this and go around preaching it. You can find articles about this here and here and the explanation videos here.
While I was initially intrigued by the theory when I dug a little deeper, rather then giving more clarity it became more and more weird. It was like saying all the scientists around the world doing space research are collectively conspiring. For what?
I gave up then.
Whatever said, the Jains were amazing at sculpting and carving. Their astronomy skills are poor clearly. But architecture skills are out of the flat world.
Endless thoughts 