Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 63

JAINISM
this kind is allowed ; even so far as honey and butter does the law of forbidden food go, because in the gaining of honey the lives of bees are too often sacrificed, and so on. Then we find in the daily life of the Jaina rules laid down for the layman as to how he is to begin and end every day :
“He must rise very very early in the morning and then he must repeat silently his mantras, counting its repetition on his fingers ; and then he has to say to himself, what am I, who is my Ishtadeva, who is my Gurndeva, what is my religion, what should I do, what should I not do ?” This is the beginning of each day, the reckoning up of life as it were ; careful, selfconscious recognition of life. Then he is to think of the Tirthamkaras, and then he is to make certain vows. Now these vows are peculiar, as far as I know, peculiar to the Jainas, and they have an object which is praiseworthy and most nseful. A man at his own discretion makes some small vow on a thing absolutely unimportant. He will say in the morning : “During this day"--I will take an extreme case given to me by a Jaina—“ during this day I will not sit down more than a certain mumber of times;” or he will say : “For a week I will not eat such and such a vegetable;" or he will say: "For a week, or ten days, or a month, I will keep an hour's silence during the day.” You may say: Why! In order that the man may always be self-conscions, and never lose his control over the body. That is the reason that was given me by my Jaina friend, and I thought it an extremely sensible one. From young boyhood a boy is