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340
RELIGIOUS SECTS
of gold and jewels: the Digambaras leave their images without the foreign aid of ornament.
The Svetámbaras assert that there are twelve heavens, and sixty-four Indras: the Digambaras maintain that there are sixteen heavens, and one hundred Olympian monarchs.
The Svetámbaras permit their Gurus to eat out of vessels: the Digambaras receive the food in their open hands from their disciples.
The Svetámbaras consider the accompaniments of the brush, waterpot, &c., as essential to the character of an ascetic: the Digambaras deny their importance.
The Svetámbaras assert that the Angas, or scriptures, are the work of the immediate disciples of the Tirthankaras: the Digambaras, with more reason, maintain that the leading authorities of the Jain religion are the composition of subsequent teachers or Ácháryas.
The advantage gained by the Digambaras in the last debateable matter, they lose, it is to be apprehended, in the next, when they assert that no woman can obtain Nirván, in opposition to the more gallant doctrine of their rivals, which admits the fair sex to the enjoyment of final annihilation.
These will be sufficient specimens of the causes of disagreement that divide the Jainas into two leading branches, whose mutual animosity is, as usual, of an intensity very disproportionate to the sources from whence it springs.
