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The Great Hero
123 From the time of Mahâvîra onwards, Jains have displayed certain specific features, and have developed doctrines of a rather peculiar and distinctive character, which may well go back to the days of the founder, and which have exercised an influence on the mainstream of Hinduism. It seems fairly clear that Vardhamana's intellectual background was that of the Samkhya philosophy in its atheistic form. Thus Jains usually deny the existence of a Supreme Being, and treat the Absolute as consisting of a plurality of souls. The world is eternal and self-existent, and is made up of six constituent elements, units of matter, space, time, certain forces called dharma and adharma, and souls.
They venerate a number of saintly leaders called Tirathankara, all of whom are declared to have belonged to the Kshatriya, caste (another hit at the Brahmans). The aim of individual souls is by strict self-discipline to attain to the condition called Jiva or bliss, and so to become oneself a Jina, or conqueror. There is a distinction between monks and nuns on the one hand, and laity on the other. Monks and nuns have to follow a stringent rule of life. The laity are bound by minor vows, and committed to the revering and maintenance of the ascetics. Very extreme mortification is practised, and one division of the Jain community eschews entirely the wearing of clothes. Others who wear garments must not kill vermin which may lodge in them, nor, if they are meditating, must they move in order to scratch themselves.
Great reverence for all forms of organic life is taught, under the name of ahimsa (literally harmlessness), and Hindus like Gandhi have developed this idea so as to include pacifism and non-violent passive resistance. Jains themselves carry ahimsa to its logical conclusion in such practices as sweeping the ground before them as they walk, in order to avoid treading on living creatures, staining their drinks, screening their lamps from insects, and even wearing respirators so as to avoid breathing in microorganisms. They observe great kindness to animals, and maintain asylums for sick beasts. They prohibit both the sacrifice of animals, and their slaughter for food, and even collect and rear young ones which their owners have discarded as superfluous (thus they would say that instead of drowning surplus kittens we ought to send them without exception to a cast home).