Jain Journal 1991 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 26

170
From water gems arose when Meru was made the churning staff.3 The gods appointed the sixty-eight places of pilgrimages, and holy days were fixed accordingly by their orders.
Notes:
1. The Jains conform in many ways to Hindu customs. The Guru here censures them for not being altogether consistent.
2. To brush away insects and thus avoid treading on them.
3. According to the Hindus, Vişņu in his Kūrmāvatar assumed the shape of a tortoise which supported the mountain Mandara-in the Sikh writings called Meru - the Olympus of the Hindus, with which the gods churned the ocean. From the ocean were produced the fourteen gems or jewels here referred to. They are Laksmi (sic), wife of Vişņu, the moon, a white horse with seven heads, a holy physician, a prodigious elephant, the tree of plenty, the allyielding cow, etc.
The Guru continued:
JAIN JOURNAL
After ablution the Muhammadans pray; after ablution the Hindus worship; the wise ever bathe.
The dead and the living are purified when water is poured on their heads.
Nanak, they who pluck their heads are devils: these things1 please them not.
When it raineth there is happiness; animals then perform their functions.
When it raineth, there is corn, sugar-cane, and cotton, the clothing of all.
When it raineth, kine ever graze, and women churn their milk.
By the use of the clarified butter thus obtained burnt offerings and sacred feasts are celebrated, and worship is ever adorned.
All the Sikhs are rivers; the Guru is the ocean, by bathing in which greatness is obtained.
If the Pluckheads bathe not, then a hundred handfuls of dust be on their skulls, a