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in the name of religion and do not believe in the creation theory or in God as a supreme being and creator, ruler and destroyer of the world. Both decry distinctions based on birth and both uphold the effect of Karma, or one's own actions, upon an individual's future life. Above all, both of them lay the greatest emphasis on the principle of Ahimsa, nonviolence on non-injury to life, and incidentally therefore advocate vegetarianism.
con
It is true that the Jains are probably the only people in the world who take the law prohibiting killing quite seriously and are strict vegetarians. The very first condition of initiation into Jainism even for a layman is the giving up altogether of eating meat and drinking wine. Many Buddhists, on the other hand, are meat-eaters and they seek to find sanction for doing so in their scriptures. It is said that General Siha, a Lichchavi prince of Vaisali who was Jain and a follower of Mahavira, became under the influence of the Buddha a vert to Buddhism and a liberal supporter of the Buddhist monks whom he kept constantly supplied with 'good fresh food'. When it was noised abroad that the bhiksus were in the habit of eating such food the Tirthikas (other Śramaņa teachers) made the practice a matter of angry reproach. According to the Vinaya text, it was after a breakfast given by Siha to the Buddha and some of the monks, for which the carcase of a large ox was procured, that the Nirgranathas (Jains) reviled them. At this the Buddha instituted the new rule declaring fish and flesh 'pure' (that is, lawful) in the three conditions-they were not to eat the flesh of any animal which they had been put to death for them, or about which they had been told that it had been killed for them or about which they had reasons to suspect that it had been slain for them. The animal food thus said to have been permitted by the Buddha himself came to be known as the 'three pures' or 'three pure kinds of flesh', tersely described as 'unseen, unheard, unsuspected'. Later on two more kinds are said to have been declared lawful-flesh of animals which had died a natural death, and that of animals which had been killed by a bird of prey or other savage creature. Still later, the number of kinds of 'pure flesh' was increased to
