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Updated: June 23, 2025
Jina was a Perfect One, who subdued all worldly desires; who lived an unselfish life, practiced the golden rule, harmed no living thing, and attained the highest aim of the soul, right knowledge, right conduct, temperance, sobriety, chastity and a Holy Calm. There are now 1,334,148 Jains in India, and among them are the wealthiest, most highly cultured and most charitable of all people.
Once the king of Magadha asked the congregation to postpone the period of retreat during the rains until the next full moon day. They referred the matter to the Buddha: "I prescribe that you obey kings," was his reply. One obvious distinction between the Buddha's disciples and other confraternities was that they were completely clad, whereas the Âjîvikas, Jains and others went about naked.
The proceedings lasted seventy-five days and the concourse which collected to gaze and receive must have resembled the fair still held on the same spot. Buddhists, Brahmans and Jains all partook of the royal bounty and the images of Buddha, Sûrya and Śiva were worshipped on successive days, though greater honour was shown to the Buddha.
The Sikhs and the Jains are Indian sects which flourish in certain localities; as there are nearly two millions of the former in the Punjab, and over half a million of the latter in Bombay, and approaching that number in Rajputana, with comparatively few elsewhere. The Parsees, or Parsis, who were driven from Persia by the Mohammedans, number 76,774 in Bombay, not the city, but the presidency.
The Jains were powerful in Gujarat and Rajputâna. In Bengal Śâktism and moribund Buddhism were not likely to engender new enthusiasms. But in a few centuries the movements inaugurated in the south increased in extension and strength.
Sthiramati and Guṇamati appear to have belonged to the same school and perhaps Bhavaviveka too. The statements as to his date are inconsistent but the interesting fact is recorded that he utilized the terminology of the Sânkhya for the purposes of the Mahayana. Throughout the middle ages the study of logic was pursued but Buddhists and Jains rather than by Brahmans.
Wherever Jains gain influence beasts are not slaughtered or sacrificed, and when old or injured are often kept in hospitals or asylums, as, for instance, at Ahmadabad . Their ascetics take stringent precautions to avoid killing the smallest creature: they strain their drinking water, sweep the ground before them with a broom as they walk and wear a veil over their mouths.
Even in the shops of the laity lamps are carefully screened to prevent insects from burning themselves. The principal divisions are the Digambara and Śvetâmbara as above described and an offshoot of the latter called Dhundia who refuse to use images in worship and are remarkable even among Jains for their aversion to taking life.
To the present day the salats or builders, mostly Jains, have in their keeping, jealously locked away in iron-bound chests in their temples, many ancient treatises on civil and religious architecture, of which only a few abstracts have hitherto been published in Gujerati, but, as may be seen at Ahmedabad, in the great Jaina temple of Hathi Singh, built in the middle of the last century at a cost of one million sterling, they have preserved something of the ancient traditions of their craft.
The Jains form in some sort a transition-sect between Boodhists and Hindoos, differing from the former in acknowledging castes, and from both in their worship of Paras-nath's foot, instead of that of Munja-gosha of the Boodhs, or Vishnoo's of the Hindoos.
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