Life in India/The Jainas
The Jainas.
The Jainas are the Budhists of India. They are followers of the religion, in a modified form, which now is believed in Ceylon, Siam, Burmah, Thibet, Tartary, and very extensively in China, Cochin-China, and Japan. It is, at the present day, one of the most extensively received religions in the world.
The Jainas of India maintain that theirs is the primitive and orthodox faith of Hindustan. Originally, they say, Brahminism was not the religion of India; but the Brahmins have left the practices of the ancients, having introduced false gods, superstitious forms, and abominable modes of worship. They reject the religious books of the Brahmins, the incarnations of the god Vishnu, and the worship of animals. This follows from their belief that God cannot become incarnate or take on him a fleshly body. As they hold it to be a sin to take life under any circumstances, they consider the sacrifice of animals, as of goats and fowls by the Hindus of other sects, to be an act of horrible impiety. Such sacrifices they view with abhorrence.
They believe that there is one Supreme Being, who is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, but utterly indifferent to the good or bad deeds of men. He alone, they say, is to be worshipped. In practice, however, they are idolaters, worshipping images, not of God, but of deified men. They do this upon the ground that these men having, by attaining perfect holiness, been freed from their material bodies, have become a part of the Supreme God by union with his essence. To worship them, therefore, is to worship God.
In a village near Seringapatam, where is the most famous of the Jaina temples, there is a colossal statue of Gautama, the last of those who have attained godship, which has been cut from the solid rock upon the face of a hill. It is in the form of a naked man of gigantic proportions. Being some seventy feet in height, and standing upon an elevation, it is visible for miles around. Great multitudes of Jainas resort to it for worship.
The term Budh, or Boodh, or Budda merely expresses the idea of divinity. Budhists, all over the world, so far as they worship any thing, worship Gautama, or Gaudama, as it is variously written.
He was son of the king of Behar in Northern India, and lived six hundred years before the birth of Christ. According to the accounts of his followers, he had lived before this birth in millions of shapes, having been born successively as fowl, fish, beast, insect, and man, in innumerable shapes and conditions. His last birth, after having attained to immense holiness in previous modes of existence, was as the son of this king. Having given his instructions to his followers, he was received into the Deity at about eighty years of age, and is now worshipped, by millions in various lands, as the last Budh.
The Hindus of the Brahminic faith say that Budh is an incarnation of their god Vishnu. According to the account given me by a learned munshi, certain men had attained to immense religious merit by practising abstinence, austerities, penances, and mediation. At last, the merit of these holy men became so great, that it bade fair soon to exceed that of the gods. In such a case, they could, in virtue of this merit, dethrone Indra, the king of heaven, and rule in his stead. Fearful of such a catastrophe, the inferior gods besought Vishnu to save them. Vishnu, accordingly, descended to earth, appeared as Budh, taught these men a false religion, and so destroyed all their merit and their power. The orthodox Hindus, therefore, will not worship Budh.
“But," I inquired of the munshi, “will you worship the lying Vishnu, who thus appeared on earth to deceive men, and destroy their virtue by teaching them a false religion?” “Oh yes," said he; “of course we will.” Upon my trying to make him see the wretchedness of such a god, and the worthlessness of such worship, he seemed quite incapable of discovering any thing out of the way in doing evil that good might come. It is painfully true of the Hindus that, "professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools;" for "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."
The Jainas do not hold the doctrines of Budh in a pure state. They have mingled with them Brahminic views. They say that sanyasees, or holy men, having mortified their appetites and passions, become completely insensible to pleasure or pain, to hunger, thirst, or any want. Their souls, freed from earthly pollution, rest upon God in unbroken contemplation. Finally, the body dissolving, or evaporating like camphor when heated, returns to the elements, and the soul, returning to God from whence it sprung, becomes a part of his essence.
At present, however, none attain to such a pitch of holiness. The soul, released by death, is born again, either into a better or worse condition, according as the life has been good or bad. So again, and again, and again, the same soul may live ten million times on earth-now a dog, next a man or bird. Some, however, pass at once to heaven or hell.
The heavens, according to this system, are sixteen, graduated, according to the merit of the soul, from a thousand to thirty-three thousand years of bliss. The hells also, seven in number, vary in the length and degree of suffering.
The religious tenets of the Brahmins having been adopted by the great mass of the Hindus, the Jainas say that they took the attitude of Protestants against these innovations. They withdrew and formed a separate body. The hatred and strife of the two sects at last resulted in a bloody and long-continued war. The Jainas were everywhere defeated, and then persecuted. Many of them fled to other countries, carrying their religion with them. The rest yielded to the ruling party. At the present day they exercise no power beyond their own sect. Their temples have been broken down, their idols destroyed, and, except a remnant, they have been swallowed up in the mass of Hinduism.
In Southern India, there are still quite large bodies of them living in their own villages, with their own shastiris and gurus, (religious teachers,) maintaining their protest against Brahminism. Their hatred of their enemies, though powerless, is often bitter, nor is it unreturned. They are generally tradesmen, mechanics, and farmers.
In many of their customs they do not differ from other Hindus; but in their horror of taking life, they exceed even the Brahmins. Not only do they abstain from eating all kinds of meat, but also from some kinds of vegetables, lest they should kill the insects often found in them. Before scouring their floors, they sweep them lightly with a soft broom, so as to spare the lives of fleas and other insects with which their houses are usually well stocked. Even scorpions, snakes, and mosquitos must not be injured, no matter how blood-thirsty or annoying in their propensities.
Our friend, the shastiri of Perumanaloor, having accused us of the crime of taking the life of animals, the accusation was returned upon himself; he was told that he slew multitudes of living creatures every day. This he denied, asserting that he took the life of no living thing. “Do you not drink water?” he was asked; “if you do, you slay your thousands.” “No! no!” answered the Shastiri, “I always have my water strained before I drink it, so as to remove any insects that may be in it.” When he was told of the wonders revealed by the microscope, and of the myriads of creatures sporting in a cup of water, too small to be seen or arrested by strainers, he knew not what to say.
It will be evident at a glance, that their system, by making it as sinful to kill a chicken as to rob a house, confounds the distinction of right and wrong. Watchful of the lives of cockroaches and scorpions, they lie without shame or sense of sin. Their religion makes them self-righteous and proud, without ennobling their motives or cleansing their hearts. Christianity alone goes deeper, and, by providing a propitiation for sin, and basing favour with God on true holiness of heart, shows the burdened conscience how it may find peace, and fosters purity in the soul. Christianity alone is from God; it alone bears the marks of a divine original.