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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
fling at the whole of the Jaina community. He writes : “Devout Jainas have been known to have placed them (the vermin) on a separate bedstead and then to have paid some one to sleep on it, so that the vermin might have nourishment!” I can only say as to this that it is a malicious libel propounded or repeated by A. S. P., quite gratuitously. It is contrary to the Jaina rule to cause pain to one living being to placate or provide nourishment for another. There is no question of buying off the consent of the victim either. Pain is pain, and the causing of it cannot be justified under any circumstances, under the Jaina doctrine. No true Shravaka will ever act in the way as the devout Jainas are said to bave done by A.S.P. If there be a story like that current in some cheap literature which he has read, that must be the outcome of the lively imagination of an easy-going penny-a-liner. I should have thought that a responsible writer would never seek to make capital out of a wretched yarn like that at any time, even though hard put to it to find something funny to say to his readers.
A.S. P. is really amusing when he says that in Hinduism escape from rebirth was open only to the Brahmans. What about Ja!iak who was a Kshatriya, and the innumerable other Kshatriyas? If the Upanishads are to be believed some of these illustrious Kshatriyas were noted for their jnana, and many a Brahman wended his way to their courts to learn wisdom divine from them!
We next have the accusation that Jainism encourages suicide. If A.S.P. had only read what is written in bold letters and clear language in one of the Jaina Shastras (Sacred Books) on the subject, he would have found ample food for reflection there. This is how the passage (rendered in English) runs:--
"Bhakta pratyakhyana marana is not proper for him who has many years of saintly life before him, who has no sear of starvation from a great fainine, who is not afflicted by
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