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- Lord Mahavira Five vows have to be taken by a fully professed Jain: (1) not to kill; (2) not to speak untruths; (3) to take nothing that is not given; (4) to observe chastity; (5) to renounce all pleasures in external objects. Rule (1) includes all speech or thought which might bring about a quarrel and so provoke a crime of violence, and self-discipline is not merely external, but includes mental exercises, acts of humiliation, and so on. The fast unto death is still in theory observable, provided one has first undergone twelve years' penance. Jain temples are clean and brightly coloured, and are visited daily by the laity, chiefly for the purpose of venerating the Tirathankaras, whose images are to be seen all around in their respective chapels. It used to be an act of great merit to increase the number of temples and shrines. The worship consists chiefly in the offering of flowers, incense, and lights, accompanied by the singing of hymns in praise of the Jain saints.
Three points may be stressed in conclusion : (1) The moral precept of ahimsa or harmlessness has
developed in modern Hinduism into one of positive kindness, or rather perhaps the daily practice of what has been called the silver rule (the negative form of the
golden rule). (2) Jainism is probably the antecedent, if not the parent, of
Buddhism. The founder of the latter movement may have been for a time a visitor to a Jain community. Jainism in the past fifty years has produced a noted saint, Vijaya Dharma Suri, who in a sermon preached before the Maharaja of Benares taught that it was an error to call the Jains atheists, since they accepted the belief in Paramatman, the Self-Existent Being. It does not appear that his point of view represents that of the majority of Jains.
(3)
