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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
number of them personally, who, though never thinking in the least of giving up the Hindu, Parsee, or Musalman creed they profess by birth, tradition and ritual, could still be called convinced Jainas, regarding their view on life and their ethical ideas. Nay, there are even numbers of heterodox people who though sticking to their old creeds, still regularly visit Jaina temples, worship Jaina idols, and even perform various ascetical and other Jaina observances as ardently as only good Jainas could do. I may be allowed to quote, as an illustration of the latter fact, the example of H.H. the present Mahārāņā of Udaipur and his heir-apparent, who, though orthodox Hindus, are known, to worship the Jina idol in the famous temple of Kesaria Nath ( near Udaipur ) in all publicity. And there are quite a considerable number of princes who could justly be styled protectors and devotees of Jaina ascetics, in whose sermons they take delight, and on whose instigation they have even issued decrees in order to promote the protection of animal life, etc., in the sense of Jainism.
Now one should think that there cannot be such a large step from admiring Jainism and living up to its ethical standard, or in a word, from being a Jaina by conviction — to being a Jaina by birth and tradition. Nor is indeed the gap between the two states such a wide one in the light of the situation as it represents itself in the peaceful South of India, amongst those calm-hearted intelligent Dravidian Jainas, who have preserved, in a state of rare purity, an old form of Digambara Jainism, one of the two chief confessions into which Jainism is divided. All their knowledge and all their observances are based on oral tradition, handed down from father to son, and from mother to daughter, without clerical interference. To them, Jainism is indeed nothing but a moral standard, and the key to the ideal view on life. It is therefore a powerful bondage connecting all the Digambara Jainas of the South ( and there are no other Jainas in the South, except late immigrants ) indissolubly with one another, as though they were members of one and the same lodge of
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