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THE EVIDENCE OF TRADITION. 11 the cloth they may wear should, by contact with their bodies, injure any microcosms that may alight on them. They did not eat after nightfall lest light should attract and kill the wandering insects of the air. Such life and manners no doubt appeared fantastic to the followers of Vaidica Dharma surrounding them, but they were tolerated by them as just a fantastic extravagance of precepts to which they themselves professed allegiance. For, as a writer •in the American Oriental Society's Journal points out" that this non-injury rule was Bud-. dhistic is contrary to evidence. Even the oldest Brahmanical law, which is at least as venerable as any Buddhist Literature, includes the general moral rule of doing as one would be done by in the matter of injuring, killing and eating one's brother-animal.... Except for sacrifice, to kill no sentient thing and to eat no meat were absolutely priestly laws ....The later Brahmanic law, like that of the Jainas, was very particular in regard to these points.” And yet, notwithstanding all this rigour, even fantastic rigour, of their Ahimsa dharma, such was the reaction of the surrounding Vaidica Dharma on their faith,and life that these Jaina munis gradually assimilated their faith and practices to those of their neighbours and did not even scruple to offer bloody sacrifices for the satisfaction of their deities on the occasion of the foundation of their villages.
A very interesting account of such a sacrifice by Jainas is given in the Kaiphiyat of
