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Updated: June 23, 2025
Such success naturally incurred the enmity of the Brahmans and there is more evidence of systematic persecution directed against the Jains than against the Buddhists. The Cola kings who ruled in the south-east of the Madras Presidency were jealous worshippers of Siva and the Jains suffered severely at their hands in the eleventh century and also under the Pândya kings of the extreme south.
I picked up a few odds and ends of information, by degrees, but only the more obvious: such as that the slight shaving of the Mohammedan's upper lip is to remove any impediment to the utterance of the name of Allah; that the red-dyed beards are a record that their wearers have made the pilgrimage to Mecca; that the respirator often worn by the Jains is to prevent the death of even a fly in inhalation.
But in India we see the disadvantages of the omission to make the laity members of a special corporation and the survival of the Jains, who do form such a corporation, is a clear object lesson. Social life in India tends to combine men in castes or in communities which if not castes in the technical sense have much the same character.
Their devotion to this article of their faith is carried to such an extent that the devout will sweep the road lest they step upon insects, and cover their mouth with gauze cloth lest they swallow and destroy minute forms of life. In the city of Bombay, Jains have a hospital for animals, for the maintenance of which they spend large sums of money annually.
The lowest castes can by this process acquire a position which makes them equal to the highest . Of the non-Brahmanic sects, the Jains set the highest value on Tapas, but chiefly as a purification of the soul and a means of obtaining an unearthly state of pure knowledge . In theory the Buddha rejected it; he taught a middle way, rejecting alike self-indulgence and self-mortification.
Near-by stands the world's largest statue, carved out of an immense boulder by the Jains in A.D. 983 to honor the saint Comateswara. The ubiquitous religious shrines of Mysore are a constant reminder of the many great saints of South India.
This institution may remove care and anxiety from the mind of the man, and make him, as we find here, calm and contented, but without the ambition of the business-man. I have taken most of this from a book I found in Bombay." "The most influential caste here are mostly Jains and Buniahs; and though they belong to different tribes, they are united in business matters.
The Buddha preached a creed without reference to a supreme deity and the great Emperor Asoka, the friend of man and beast, popularized this creed throughout India. Even at the present day the prosperous and intelligent community of Jains follow a similar doctrine and the Advaita philosophy diverges widely from European theism.
It quotes the Upanishads and Bhagavad-gîtâ, assumes as a metaphysical basis a vedantized form of the Sâṅkhya philosophy, and also accepts the legends of the pastoral Kṛishṇa but without giving much detail. Jains, Buddhists and Śaivas are blamed and the repetition of the name Govinda is enjoined.
The teachings of Buddha survive in a sect known as the Jains, founded by Jina, or Mahavira, a Buddhist priest, about a thousand years ago, as a protest against the cruel encroachments of the Hindus.
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