________________
264
R. WILLIAMS
A final glimpse of Svetāmbara ascetics in the seventeenth century is provided by Alexander Hamilton, a Scots sea captain, in the Indies from 1688 to 1722, who has described their paraphernalia in detail, including a small earthen pot with powdered saffron and oil to mark those on the forehead that have received their benediction."1
On the Digambaras the reports are more meagre. An anonymous Portuguese text, the Breve relação das escrituras dos Gentios da India Oriental e dos suos costumes2, dated by Zachariae in the second half of the seventeenth century, contains a chapter devoted to the “Zainas” to which sect the banyans of Diu are said to belong. Some legends are recounted centring around a personnage Digambara who taught the falsity of the brahmin tenet that sin could be removed by bathing. Mention is made of 24 saints who are worshipped, including one called Adimat (Ādinātha) and there is a reference to fasting unto death. Though there is no quite conclusive evidence that this treatise applies to the Digambaras the employment of the word Jaina points in that direction, for it was not normally used by the Svetāmbaras until a more recent date.
A sect more patently Digambara is mentioned in another anonymous work, the Relation des erreurs qui se trouvent dans la religion des gentils malabars which Zachariae believed might be a French adaptation of a treatise by the famous Jesuit, Roberto de' Nobili. Here are the details as given :3
“There exists a caste of people called Nastiguers who not only may not be seen when they are eating, but may not hear 1. A New Account of the East Indies, Edinburgh 1727, p. 150
See W Caland: Drie oude portugeesche Verhandelingen over het Hindoeisme 1915 for a Dutch translation. The Portuguese text is given as the first tract in Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nacoes ultramarinas
Lisbon 1812. 3. See W Caland: Twee oude fransche verhandelingen over het Hindoeisme 1923
p. 134
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
