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DISCOURSE 34
you abstain from eating meat, the members of your family should not have marital relationships with the members of that family. When you have renounced wine-drinking in your family, you cannot have marital relations with a family whose members drink liquor. Similarly, when you do not eat food in the night, you cannot have marital alliance with those who eat food in the night.
A TRAGIC INCIDENT
A pathetic event took place in a certain city, a few years ago. A girl belonging to the family of a merchant married a Sindhi boy. In her family, they had the tradition of total abstinence from meat-eating and wine-drinking and she naturally had not eaten meat at anytime. Though her parents in their life had not drunk liquors at anytime, though her parents opposed her marriage, she ignored their objection and married the boy. Of course, the girl had told the boy before their marriage that he should completely abstain from eating meat and drinking wine. The boy also had promised her to abide by her wish. But sometime after the marriage, he began eating meat. The girl came to know of it. She opposed it but her husband made light of her objection. They began to quarrel and the girl became very unhappy. She tried to persuade her husband to give up meat-eating but he did not care for her persuasion. Added to this, he began to insist upon her eating meat. The girl said to him, "I will not eat meat, even if I were to die for it. I would rather die than eat meat". The situation became so tense that the girl found it difficult to live. One day, she set fire to herself and died. What a pathetic end befell her ! She did not care to think of the necessity of parity in purity before her marriage. She believed that he would give up meateating but in his family, there existed the tradition of eating meat. So how could he give it up? It is a great good fortune if one out of a lakh gives up meat-eating.
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The same is the case with drinking liquors. If the girl is not a drinker, she should not marry a drinker. A drinker may give an assurance to the girl thus: "I will not compel you to drink wine or I will give up drinking". But he cannot act according
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