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JAINA INSTITUTIONS.
Pa'njara'pola. All three sects of Jaina unite in maintaining near many of the large towns and villages of India Pãnjirapola (Hieral2100), or asylums for old and diseased animals.
Any one may send decrepit horses, cows, donkeys, etc., there, and the Jaina undertake to feed them. The pariah dogs, too, which haunt the streets of Indian cities, are often collected in vans and taken charge of temporarily, to save them from destruction by vigilant authorities.
Unfortunately these Pānjarāpola are too often left in the hands of hirelings, without any proper supervision being exercised. The result is that they have earned a very bad reputation for starving and neglecting the imprisoned animals.*
Conferences. Each of the three leading sects has its own Conference for the development and spread of its tenets.
The head offices of both the Svetāınbara and Digambara Jaina are in Bombay, while the Sthānakavāsi have lately moved their head quarters from Morvi to Ajmere.
There are eighty-four subsects of Jaina, some of them differing very widely from each other, as the Tape Guccha (94912:9) and Añcalıt Gucch'ı (244345701249 do. The Sthānakavāsi claim to have very few subsects, but in all three cases the subsects attend the big Conference of their parent sect.
* One finds however that it is possible to secure some alleviation in
their condition, ii public attention be drawn to it.
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