Temple of Satrunjaya

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 18

with many analogies of doctrine and practice, seem to indicate that the Jainas are of Bauddha origin.
Of the history of the origin of the Jainas we know nothing. Professor
thinks it "highly probable" that "the Jaina faith was introduced into the peninsula about the seventh century of the Christian era”;4 but it may have originated much earlier, whilst it owed its spread in part to the persecution of Buddhism in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Their leading and distinguishing doctrines are: the denial of the divine origin and authority of the Vedas; reverence for the Jinas, who by their austeritics acquired a position superior to that of even those Hindu gods whom they revere ; and the most extreme tenderness for animal life. Life “is defined to be without beginning or end, endowed with attributes of its own, agent and enjoyer, conscious, subtle, proportionate to the body it animates"-diminishing with the gnat, and expanding with the elephant; through sin it passes into animal life or goes to hell; through virtue and vice combined, it passes into human form; and through virtue alone, ascends to heaven; through the annihilation of both vice and virtue, it obtains emancipation.5 The duties of a Yati or ascetic are ten,-patience, gentleness, integrity, disinterestedness, abstraction, mortification, truth, purity, poverty and continence;6 and the Sravakas “add to their moral and religious code the practical worship of the Tirthankaras, and profound reverence for their more pious brethren".? The moral obligations of the Jainas are summed up in their five mahāvratas, which are almost identical with the pañca-sila of the Bauddhas : care not to injure life, truth, honesty, chastity, and the suppression of worldly desires. They enumerate four merits or dharmas liberality, gentleness, piety and penance; and three forms of restraint-control of the mind, the tongue, and the person. Their minor instructions are in many cases trivial and ludicrous, such as not to deal in soap, natron, indigo, and iron; not to eat in the open air after it begins to rain, nor in the dark, lest a fly should be swallowed; not to leave a liquid uncovered lest an insect should be drowned; water to be thrice strained before it is drunk; and vā yukarma-keeping out of the way of the wind, lest it should blow insects into the mouth. The Yatis and priests carry an oghā or besom, made of cotton thread, to sweep insects out of the
4 Wilson, Mackenzie Collection, Introd. p. lxvii. • H. H. Wilson, Works, Vol. I. p. 307, Asiat. Resear., Vol. XVII. p. 263. & See Rules for Yatis in the Kalpa Sutra, Stevenson's transl., pp. 103-114, and especially
Nava Tatva, in ib., p. 124. ? H. H. Wilson, Works, Vol. I. p. 317; Asiat. Res., Vol. XVII. p.272. * For many similar prohibitions see Delamaine, 'On the Srawaks or Jains', Trans.
R. Asiat. Soc., Vol. I, pp. 420-421.