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XIII
BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN THE JAIN SUTRAS* Ramesh Kumar Billorey, Centre of Advanced Study in
AIHC, Calcutta University. Stray references to folk beliefs and observances, rituals and festivals, arts and crafts, etc., occur in some of the Jain Sūtras as will be seen below.
A passage in the Sūtrakrtānga refers to the practices of observing vratas and fasts and giving aims to the Sramaņas : "They strictly keep the Posaha fast on the fourteenth and eighth days of the month, or certain festivals and on full moon days. They provide the Nirgrantha Śramaņas with pure, acceptable food, drink, dainties and spices, with clothes, almsbowls, blankets and brooms, with drugs and medicines, with stools, planks, beds and conches. They purify themselves by practising the silavratas and guna-vratas, the viramaņa, the pratyākhyāna, the Posaha fasts and austerities which they have vowed to perform."1 The Uttarādhyayana Sūtru also refers to the rules of conduct for a householder: "He should never neglect the Posaha fast in both fortnights, not even for a single night.”2
Festivals observed in honour of various deities are mentioned in the Acārānga Sūtra. “A monk or a nun on a begging tour should not accept food, etc., in the following case : when in assemblies or during offerings to the manes, or on a festival of Indra or Skanda or Rudra or Mukunda or demons or Yakşas or the snakes or a festival in honour of a tomb, a shrine, a tree, a hill, a cave, a well, a tank, a pond, a river, a lake, the sea, a mine ... when on such festivais many Sramaņas and Brāhmaṇas, guests, paupers and beggars are enter
This note was received in March, 1973.-Ed.)
1 Jaina Sūtras, trans., H. Jacobi, Part II, SBE, Vol. XLV, pp. 383-84. [Read 'couches' for 'conches'.--Ed
2 Ibid., p. 23. The posait of the Jains corresponds to the uposatha of the Buddhists.
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