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The Jaina Canon and Early Indian-Court Life
From the canonical writings of a religion one is prepared to gain insight into its dogma, ethics, philosophical ideas, and the history of its propagation and propagators. The last topic may allow glances at its historical and cultural background. Scarcely, however, should one expect to glean from them a harvest of the most vivid descriptions of ancient Indian court life. Still this is one of the pleasant surprises with which the student of the Jaina Agamas is rewarded for the pains it cost him to work through the difficulties of their strange medium, the old Ardha-māgadhī tongue.
All the great Jaina sages were scions of illustrious Ksatriya clans, and all of them were prompted by the voice of religious intuition to leave the vain splendours of a royal court for the loneliness of Saṁnyāsa. This has given the chronicles ample opportunity of enlivening their narrative by dwelling on the contrast between both aspects of the lives of their saints.
So they allow us glimpses of the palace of an ancient king with its sweet-scented, gem-inlaid apartments. We are allowed to peep right into the gaily-painted, mosaic-floored, jewel-lit bedroom of the queen, with its curious toilet requisites. There she reclines on a couch that is smooth like Ganges sand, soft like flakes of cottonwool, covered with cushions and with coverlets of red silk, perfumed with frankincense and olibanum, and strewn with fragrant flowers. Auspicious dreams descend and awake her long before dawn, and we see her rise and leave the room to narrate them to her royal husband, while they are fresh in her memory.
Another time we are permitted to watch the king with his
* Published in January issue of the Journal Calcutta Review, Calcutta University, 1934.
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