Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 269

262
R. WILLIAMS
works such as fasting or almsgiving brought their own reward in the next reincarnation as man or beast. Some fasted for 20, 30, even 40 days, drinking only water in which a bitter herb had been infused. Any layman could enter religion if he put on the monk's robe and led a godly life, boys beig admitted at seven or eight years of age though women must be over twenty. The same source provided the basis for the brief comments on Jainism made by two other Dutchmen, the chaplain Baldaeusand the trader Volquard Ivesen.2
An Anglican chaplain, Henry Lords, who was in India from 1624 to 1629 spoke of the Verteas as "more special brahmins”; he appears to be the first traveller to name the Tapā Gaccha and the Kharatara Gaccha as well as the festival of Putcheson (Paryuşaņa). It was left for another Anglican clergyman, Thomas Ovington to offer the most percipient comments on Jainismo yet made by any European:
“One sort of brahmins at Surat which are by much the strictest sect among them do far exceed the rest in abstraction from sense and abstemious living; and, refrain from entering the conjugal state lest some animals, as they tell us, might be crushed to death by their mutual embraces. . . . This sort of brahmins are sparing of their speech and will rarely speak for fear of killing some invisible creatures which, they affirm, float in the air, and which some of their holy men have seen though
rs cannot. ... And for the same end a cloth is always across their mouth and fastened at each ear ... [and they cannot be brought] to wash their bodies and cleanse themselves with water for fear of murdering some creatures which, they fancy, live in that element."
1.
Afgoderye der Oost-Indische Heydenen ed. A. J. de Jong The Hague 1917 p. 2 Ostindische Reise und unglueckliche Schiffahrt Hamburg 1698 Cap. XII, p. 160. A Discovery of the Sect of the Banians London, 1630. A Journey to Surat in the year 1689 London 1929 (reprint of 1696 edition) p. 196
3.