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MEDIEVAL JAINISM: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT
during the Bhadrapada month every year and destruction of animal life on the coronation day of the Maharana."
Akbar, the great emperor of India, was highly influenced by the teachings of Hiravijayasuri' and Jinachandrasuri. He gave the title of Jagatgura to Hiravijaya and Yugapradhana to Jinachandra. From the inscription dated 1593 A.D. of Satrunjaya hill, it appears that Hiravijaya persuaded the Emperor in 1592 A.D. to issue an edict forbidding the slaughter of animals for six months. At the instance of Jinachandrasuri, Akbar issued a farman ordering the prohibition of the slaughter of animals for seven days (Navami to Purnima) every year in the month of Ashadaha.
Influenced by the teachings of Hiravijayasuri, Surtana Simha, ruler of Sirohi, took a vow in 1582 to refrain from drinking, hunting, flesh eating and irregular sexual life. A Bhila chief named Arjuna also took a vow not to kill any innocent animal.
So popular was Jainism for some time that even oilmen and people of similar castes observed the doctrine of ahimsa out of respect for the Jaina population. An inscription' engraved on a slab built in the wall of a Jaina temple at Deoli of 1715 A.D. records that the oilmen of the town agreed to stop working their mills for 44 days in a year at the request of Saraiya and Jivaraja of the Mahajana community in the reign of Maharavala Prithvisimha of the former Pratapgarh State.
Ahimsa does not mean that Jainism does not sanction fighting on the battlefield for the right cause. In the history of Rajasthan, there are instances where numerous Jaina warriors such as Vimala, Udaya, Vastupala and Tejapala did not lag behind the followers of other faiths in battlefields for the cause of mother
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