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RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS
267 to the Mātā if her child recover or escape infection altogether.
It is pitiful to see Jaina women who are childless Children. going to Hindu temples and promising to offer cradles or money if only a little son may be born to them. They even promise that for three or four years the child shall be treated as a beggar, and no name given to him; all they ask is that their reproach may be taken away.
The orthodox Jaina declare that all these superstitions which their women folk have copied from the Hindus are contrary to their religion and indeed must even be accounted Mithyātva Salya;1 but they do not see that they are born of fear, and that they will only disappear when the timid ones begin to trust a personal God and learn that the AllPowerful is the All-Lo
1 See pp. 130 ff.
