Temple of Satrunjaya

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

Page 33

they openly assisted the Rajputs and even Musalmans in the plunder, or--as they were pleased to phrase it,--the rescue' of cattle poultry, etc., from such as they chose to suspect might slaughter them.43 At Surat, Bharoch, Bombay, and elsewhere, they support pinjrāpoles or hospitals for animals.44 "Not only”, says Briggs, "are eligible roofs and extensive grounds set apart for this purpose, and quantities of the best of food bestowed, men employed to protect the property, and brutes impaled,but even lads are engaged to scare crows and other birds from disturbing the dumb inmates of these hospitals. Nay, more than this; a wealthy Sravaka at Ahmedabad has paid so much as forty rupees for a vile bedcurtain, not worth so many farthings, merely to prevent the destruction of the myriads of vermin it contained. This very identical native gentleman afterwards shrunk from contributing a mite to a proposed Lunatic Asylum, while thousands of rupees were lavishly bestowed upon his animal-ward."45
“They have”, says Captain (now General) G. Le Grand Jacob, "in several places forced the Rajput and other Chiefs to enter into engagements not to permit the slaughter of sheep, etc., but, though childmurder within the same district was notorious, as far as my knowledge extends, they have not so much as attempted to stipulate for the preservation of human beings.”:46
The Jainas are divided into two principal sects, Digambaras, the 'sky-clad', or Nagnas, 'naked', and Svetambaras or 'white-robed'. Of these the former sect is said to have been founded by Siddha Sena Divakara
43 Col. G. Le Grand Jacob's Memoirs on the Province of Kattyawar, Bombay Selections,
No. XXXVII. p. 29; Trans. Bombay Geog. Soc., Vol. VII. p. 29. 44 Conf. Ovington, Voyage to Surat in the Year .689, p. 301. 45 Briggs, Cities of Gujarat, pp. 354, 355. Conf. pp. 111-113. 46 Bombay Selections, No. XXXIX,- Suppression of Infanticide in Kattyawar', Part
ii. Letter dated 23rd October 1841, pp. 599, 600. On this Dr. Wilson remarks: "It is a fact that the Jainas in the peninsula of Gujarat are the most ostentatious in their professed regard for the preservation of life, especially that of the brutes, which they say, are incapable of asking the aid of man whose fellows they may have been in former births. To the preservation of life, however, the doctrine of the metempsychosis is not, logically speaking, favourable. As every creature has a certain number of births (according to the sastra 8,400,000) to go through before absorption in the case of the Brahminists, and before liberation or extinction in the case of the Jainas, death would appear rather to hasten than delay these grand results. It is a feeling of simple brotherhood, as far as life is concerned, with the unfortunate brutes, which makes the Jainas so tenderly preserve them. For the life of man, this feeling is by no means so strong among them as for the life of brutes. While the slaughter of a cow in one of their towns would well-nigh produce a rebellion, the slaughter of a helpless infant would scarcely excite among them a feeble dissatisfaction."—Rev. Dr. J. Wilson, History of the Suppression of Infanticide in Western India, p. 27, see also p. 263.