Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 57

JAINA LAY ADHERENTS,
45
This is due not to the laity so much as to the obscurantism of the ascetics, who at their initiation were themselves supposed to have renounced caste. The Mathurā inscriptions bear witness to the antiquity of caste amongst the Jaina," but to the cruelty and inhumanity of it I know no more convincing testimony than the notice in English affixed to the entrance of Hathisisha's temple in Ahmedabad, which runs as follows:
“Low caste servants in attendance on visitors and dogs cannot be allowed to enter the temple."
The Brahmans are still the domestic chaplains of the Jaina, and officiate at their wedding, birth and death
ceremonies. The Brahmanic ritual is Marriage.
followed almost completely in the case of a Jaina wedding, excepting that of late years, instead of fire, Arihanta is worshipped, a change due to the influence of the conferences.
The customary age for marriage differs with the sects : the Sthānakavāsi and Svetāmbara generally marry their daughters at about fourteen or fifteen to boys of about nineteen or twenty. There is however no special religious sanction amongst them for any particular age.t
The Digambara are governed by fifty-three rules of life (Saṁskāra zizst2 ), and amongst these is a saying that
a father should seek a fitting husband for his daughter.' They generally marry their daughters when about ten
* Dr. Hoernle's Annual Address. A. S. B. 1898. p. 51. + Dr. Burgess (Notes on the Jainas. p. 36) says :--"Among Jainas, as among Brahmans, it is strictly preseribed that girls should be betrothed before puberty.” The Jaina I have consulted deny this.