Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 90

78
MODERN JAINISM.
Again one may, as the result of sin, become a beast or a bird, or be born in Hell. To be born in Hell is the worst of all punishments, while another of the heaviest penalties is to be born an onion or other “one-sensed " thing.
If in one life a woman is not faithful to her husband, she will in the next become a widow. It is hideous to think of all the suffering that has been caused by this one article of belief, and this suffering has been heightened by the fact that it is only the child widow, i. e, the one most incapable of defending herself, who is believed to have thus sinned. When older women lose their husbands in mature life, it is considered simply to be in the course of nature.
Certain other sins cause physical deformity in the next birth, or may make a woman childless. Loss of friends. relations, wealth, etc., are all put down to sins in a former life, as are excessive sleepiness and laziness. One Jaina gentleman told me that, as his family consisted only of daughters, he found it a great expense to marry them all oft, but he dare not complain, as all his friends assured him it was only his just punishment for having misappropriated funds in a previous existence !