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JAINA WORSHIP AND
to carry no grudge and no quarrel over into the next year. At the close of the meeting every one present asks forgive. ness from his neighbours for any offence he may even unwittingly have given, and they all write letters to distant friends asking thcir forgiveness also. This determination to start the new year in love and charity with their neighbours they do not confine to their own community; for example, the writer used to be bewildered by receiving letters from Jaina friends and pandits who had never offended her in any way asking her forgiveness in case they had unwittingly vexed her. One cannot help feeling that this beautiful custom of the Jaina is one of the many precious things they will bring as their special tribute to that City of God into which at last shall be gathered all the glory and wealth of devotion of the nations.
Some time during the Pajjusaņa week the Svetāmbara Jaina often arrange a special procession though the town in honour of their Kalpa Sūtra.
Another pageant the same sect arrange is a cradle pro. cession on Mahāvira's birthday, which is now conventionally fixed for the first day of Bhadrapada, the fourth day of Pajjusaņa. Sthānakavāsī Jaina are not permitted to cele. brate the day, lest it should lead to idolatry, but the other sects decorate their temples with flags on this and on the conventional birthdays of other Tirthankara.
Curiously enough Divālī, the next great holy day of the Jaina, is really a Hindu festival in honour of Lakşmi, the goddess of wealth. All through our studies, however, we have seen the great influence that Hinduism has exerted on Jainism, and here it pressed a mercantile community at its weakest point, its love of moncy; naturally enough such a community was not willing to omit anything that could propitiate one who might conceivably have the bestowal of wcalth in her power. The festival has, however, been given a Jaina sanction by calling it the day on which Mahāvira passed to mokşa, when all the eighteen confederate kings
Divāli.
