Jainism

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

Page 40

JAINISM 25
without thinking, never to act without thinking, see how unconsciously the body would learn to follow the mind, and without struggle and effort, carelessness would be destroyed. Of course there are far more serious vows than these taken by the layman as to fasting, strict and severe, every detail carefully laid down in the rules, in the books. But this is a point that you would not so readily find in the books, so far as I know and it seems to me to be characteristic and useful. Let me add that when you meet Jainas you will find them, as a rule, what you might expect from this training quiet, self-controlled, dignified, rather silent, rather reserved.1
Pass from the layman to the ascetic, the Yati. Their rules are very strict. Much of fasting, carried to an extraordinary extent, just like the fasting of the great ascetics of the Hindu. There are both men and women ascetics among the sect known as the Shvetambaras; among the Digambaras there
1 The
details here given are mostly from the Jainatattvädarsha, by Muni Atmārāmji, and were translated from the Prakrit for me by my friend Govind Das.