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The Social Atmosphere of Present Jainism
one and the same caste were in most cases soon stopped, owing to the pressure exercised by the renegades, who tried to force the rest of the caste by this kind of boycott to become Vaisnavas likewise. Wherever there was a Vaisnava majority and a Jaina minority, the latter had to give way, i.e., they had to give up their faith in order to get wives for their sons or for themselves, no matter how firm their innermost convictions as to their old creed might be. Old men in grey hair have indeed been seen weeping at the feet of Jaina monks, confessing with utter grief how it came that decades ago they had been forced to give up the still beloved faith of their fathers for practical reasons, and how much grieved they were at seeing their children growing up in the atmosphere of the new faith.
Thus, it could happen that, within the last hundred years, many castes which had been pure Jaina castes before, have lost the claim to this title, the small rest of Jainas amongst their members dwindling quickly away, as it is the case with the Modha, Maniyāra and Bhāvasara Baniyās. Only a few years hence the last Jainas of the Vādanagar Nāgara Baniyās have adopted Vaisnavism definitely, because the isolated, small, but enthusiastic flock could not, in their social needs, prevail upon the Visā-śrīmālī Jainas to receive them into their midst, and to allow them to join their messmateship and marriage-circle. The narrow-mindedness of their ‘Brothers-inthe Lord' drove them straight into the arms of Vaişnavism. Thus, the report of Jaina Ācārya Buddhisāgara ( I, I. p. 11f.).
In the same way, the Lingayat of the Deccan and the Sarāka of Bengal, both of them pure Jaina castes at a time, do not count even a single Jaina amongst their members at present.
Thus, the unreasonable caste and sectarian organization of the Jainas of North and Central India is indeed responsible for the greater part of the numerous cases of apostasy amongst the Jainas which happened in the last decades.
There are other reasons too, such as the want of proper schools, where people could be taught to understand the inner
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