Heart of Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Mrs Sinclair Stevenson

Page 18

INTRODUCTION
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Pārsvanatha. It were surely at once an interesting and an instructive study to search out the causes that enabled Jainism thus to weather the storms that in India wrecked so many of the other faiths. Quietly, unobtrusively, Jainism has held on the even tenor of its way: but why? Here, for the student of Comparative Religion, lies a fascinating problem. Dr. Hoernle's discussion of this subject in his Presidential Address of 1898 before the Asiatic Society of Bengal was singularly luminous, emphasizing as it did the place accorded from the very first to the lay adherent as an integral part of the Jaina organization. In the Buddhist Order, on the other hand, the lay element received no formal recognition whatsoever. Lacking thus any bond with the broad strata of the secular life of the people', Buddhism, under the fierce assault on its monastic settlements made by the Moslems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, proved incompetent to maintain itself and simply disappeared from the land. In contrast therewith Jainism, less enterprising but more speculative than Buddhism, and lacking the active missionary spirit that in early times dominated the latter, has been content to spend a quiet life within comparatively narrow borders, and can show to-day in Western and Southern India not only prosperous monastic establishments but also lay communities, small perhaps, yet wealthy and influential. Adopting the terms of present-day ecclesiastical discussion, one may say the survival of the Jainas has been due in large measure to their having opened the doors of the Synod of their Church to lay representation.
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Yet another reason that well may attract to the study of Jainism lies in the fact that a singular interest attaches to its doctrines and its history. Its first home was near Benares, and thus lay to the east of that 'holy land' which was the seat of the Vedic cult. But with the process of years it has migrated westwards and northwards, with the remarkable consequence that to-day there are no Jainas
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