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The worship performed in the temples consists of simple offerings of flowers, incense and lights made with little ceremony. Pilgrims go their rounds in small bands and kneeling together before the images sing the praises of the Jinas. It is remarkable that Jainism is still a living sect, whereas the Buddhists have disappeared from India.
Important but not peculiar to Jainism is the doctrine of the periodical appearance of great teachers who from time to time restore the true faith . The same idea meets us in the fourteen Manus, the incarnations of Vishnu, and the series of Buddhas who preceded Gotama. According to the Jain scriptures all Jinas are born in the warrior caste, never among Brahmans.
But there is no finality about these catastrophes: the destruction of the whole universe is as certain as the death of a mouse and to the philosopher not more important . Everything is periodic: Buddhas, Jinas and incarnations of all sorts are all members of a series.
Jonas' private letters, recommendations, etc.; and likewise bore away to his own diggeens a Bible, several prayer books, and three or four hymn books belonging to the preacher. "Brethreen and sisters," he said, "I am no longer the wicked Ned Sykes, but the good and Reverend Mr. Jinas."
But see what is said on the size of topes in chapter iii, note 4. In Singhalese, Pase Buddhas; called also Nidana Buddhas, and Pratyeka Jinas, and explained by "individually intelligent," "completely intelligent," "intelligent as regards the nidanas." As the ideal hermit, the Pratyeka Buddha is compared with the rhinoceros khadga that lives lonely in the wilderness.
Both believe in some form of reincarnation, in karma and in the periodical appearance of beings possessed of superhuman knowledge and called indifferently Jinas or Buddhas. The historian may therefore be disposed to regard the two religions as not differing much more than the varieties of Protestant Dissenters to be found in Great Britain. But the theologian will perceive real differences.
Their caste divisions, their total abstinence from flesh, and their non-worship of the relics of the saints, are as strictly observed as the similar tenets of the Brahmans, but, like Buddhists, they deny the Hindu gods and the authority of the Vedas, and adore their own twenty-four Tirthankaras, or Jinas, who belong to the Host of the Blissful.
Though the Pâncarâtra is connected with Kṛishṇa in its origin, it gives no prominence to devotion to him under that name as do modern sects and it knows nothing of the pastoral Kṛishṇa. It recommends the worship of the four Vyûhas presiding over the four quarters in much the same way that late Buddhism adores the four Jinas depicted in somewhat similar forms.
In any case it is closely related to old ideas about the magic power of Vedic verses. The five Jinas and other supernatural personages are often regarded as manifestations of a single Buddha-force and at last this force is personified as Âdi-Buddha. But another form in which the Buddha-force is impersonal and analogous to the Parabrahma of the Vedânta is much older.
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