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The Social Atmosphere of Present Jainism
freemasonry. Whether their mother-tongue be Tamil, or Kanarese, or Malayalam, or Telugu; and whether their respective caste be a high one or a low one : All the autochthonous Jainas of those parts are one great community, in which sub-sectarian and sectarian differences are unknown, and in which there exists an unexceptional mutual messmateship and complete freedom of intermarriage. To those pure-hearted and pious people, every Jaina is indeed a brother and friend, no matter if he be a born Jaina or not.
In North and Central India, however, where both the great confessions, Digambaras as well as Śvetāmbaras, are represented with their various sub-sects, and where there exists a regular system of Jaina schools and other educational institutions as well as a vivid Jaina propaganda, exercised both by laymen and by ascetics, the situation is quite a different one. Here, the title 'Jaina' implies not only the obligation of undergoing the most rigid ascetical and other practices and minute observances, but it also involves that the individual bearing the title is being entangled, from his very birth, in a net of caste and sub-caste regulations, which are exercising their influence on the individual's whole household and personal affairs, during his whole lifetime.
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The reader must be wondering what religion can possibly have to do with caste regulations, all the more since the Jaina religion itself is known to plead for universal love and tolerance, and to recommend a close and indiscriminate alliance, especially of all 'Svāmībhāis', i.e., 'Brothers in the Lord', to whatever caste or profession they may belong, just as the one existing amongst the Southern Digambara Jainas. Still, the miracle-working hand of history has succeeded in bringing about that incredible and apparently inextricable combination of the two heterogeneous elements, caste and religion, in the case of the northern Jainas.
The present representatives of northern Jainism belong practically all to one or another of the Baniya castes, which form the bulk of the Vaisya or commercial group of Indo-Aryan society. Like
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