Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 18

RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
Even during that period it lost in members and many a time in royal patronage and popular support, due to the greater proselytising activity of the Buddhists and of the Saiva and Vaisnava sects of Brāhmaṇism, which sometimes took the form of violent religious persecutions. Thereafter, it went through the process of decline. A variety of internal and external factors made the community suffer both in influence and numbers, till at the present time it can count a bare three to four million souls as its members.
No doubt, they form part of elite and prosperous section of the Indian middle classes, are occupied in business, industry, banking, trade and commerce, the different learned professions, services and politics, and are scattered all over the country, residing particularly in all the big towns, capital cities and trade centres. The percentage of literacy and education is comparatively very high and that of crime very low. They are well known for their philanthropy, charitable institutions and work of public welfare.
In their food habits, the Jainas are perfect vegetarians, rather lacto-vegetarians, do not eat meat, fish or egg, not drink spirituous liquors. They follow, in general, such trades and vocations as do not involve injury to life, up-holding the doctrine of ahimsā as best as they can. They usually do not take food after sunset, drink filtered or strained water, milk and the like, and avoid hurting or killing any living being.
By and large, the Jainas are religious minded and pious, worship before the images of the Jinas or Tīrthankaras installed in their temples, read or recite their scriptures, and pay devotion to the gurus (ascetic teachers). The members of the ascetic order, both male and female, are, on the whole saintly, very puritanical, selfless, possessionless and austere in the observance of their vows and the rules of their order.