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RELIGIOUS SECTS
instructions or prohibitions, sometimes of a beneficial and sometimes of a trivial, or even ludicrous tendency, such as to abstain, at certain seasons, from salt, flowers, green fruit, and roots, honey, grapes, and tobacco; to drink water thrice strained: never to leave a liquid uncovered, lest an insect should be drowned in it; not to deal in soap, natron, indigo, and iron; and never to eat in the dark lest a fly should be swallowed. Religious characters wear a piece of cloth over their mouths to prevent insects from fiving into them, and carry a brush under their arms to sweep the place on which they are about to sit, to remove any ants or other living creatures out of the way of danger. Upon the whole, the doctrine of the Jainas is a system of quietism calculated to render those who follow it perfectly innoxious, and to inspire them with apathetic indifference towards both this world and the next.
The ritual of the Jains is as simple as their moral code. The Yati, or devotee, dispenses with acts of worship at his pleasure, and the lay votary is only bound to visit daily a temple where some of the images of the Tirthankaras are erected, walk round it three times, make an obeisance to the images, with an offering of some trifle, usually fruit or flowers, and pronounce some such Mantra, or prayer, as the following: “Namo Arihantánam, Namo Siddhánam, Namo Aryánam, Namo Upájyánam, Namo Löe Sabba Sahúnam-Salutation to the Arhats, to the Pure Existences, to the Sages, to the Teachers, to all the Devout in the world.” A morning prayer is also re
