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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
non-publicity of one's own merits and other people's shortcomings or defaults, helping others to keep on the right path or the straightening of the faltering, deep affection for the righteous, and the glorification of the creed especially by one's own righteous example. The opposite of these eight essential characteristics are the eight flaws or defects (doubt, desire, disgust, etc.) of right faith, which are to be avoided. He also keeps himself free of the eight kinds of arrogance, haughtiness, pride or vanity, pertaining to his lineage, connections, physical strength, physical beauty and accomplishments, wealth, position or status, wisdom or knowledge, and righteousness or piety. He does not indulge in superstitions, popular or religious, that is, those relating to deity, popular beliefs, and false faiths. And he regards false gods, false gurus and false faiths, as well as the followers of these three, as not being the abodes of true dharma. Besides, he is immune to the fears of life, death, the hereafter, calamities, natural or supernatural and the like. Right Knowledge Samyag-jñāna or right knowledge is the true, correct, proper and relevant knowledge of the reality, the tattvas, the path and connected things like the nature of god or godhood. It represents the teaching of the Jinas or Tīrthankaras, and is contained in the Jaina āgama (canon or scriptures). The āgama was originally classified into twelve major divisions (angas), of which the last contained five subdivisions, the fourteen Purvas forming the most important of these subdivisions. There were also a number of miscellanea, outside the regular canon. After the nirvāna of the last Tīrthankara, Mahāvīra, this body of canonical knowledge continued to be handed down, for severl centuries, by word of mouth, through a succession of eminent teachers, before the more important portions of the surviving canon began to be redacted from fear lest the original scriptures should suffer from total loss or corruption.
