Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 14

MODERN JAINISM
most literate in India," whose temples are famous amongst the glories of the East, and whose worship far excels in purity of thought and ritual the Hinduism which surrounds it.
Jainism, like its great rival Buddhism, seems to have taken its rise in the sixth century before Christ, an age in which religious speculation was rife in many parts of the world.
In India the joyous, childlike faith reflected in the earlier Vedas had been stifled under priestly domination; “ the Aryan Holy land was parcelled out among a number of petty chieftains, who waged internecine war one against anothert;" the climate, then as now, exerted its depressing influence on all beneath its sway, and the consequent pessimism is reflected in the philosophies of the times. • The immediate cause which gave rise to both Buddhism and Jainism was probably the caste exclusiveness of the Brāhmans in restricting entrance into the medicant or fourth āsram, to members of their own community. This restriction was specially obnoxious to members of the next, the Ksatriya (or warrior) caste, and it is noticeable that it is from this caste that the historic leaders of both religions sprang, in a part of the world, too, where Brahman influence was already weakening.
* Twenty-five per cent of the Jaina are able to read and write ; thus
they are second only to the Pärsis, of whom two thirds are literate. + Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. I. p. 407. # The old Brahmanic religion directed a man to pass through four
successive äsrana ( stages ), first that of a religious student, next that of a house-holder, then to retire from the world as an anchorite, and lastly to spend the remaining years of his life as a wandering mendicant.