a servant and tell him to give the alms to an ascetic, but they must get up and give them themselves, and must give without conceit.
The sādhu on his part must never send notice beforehand of his coming, for a layman must always be prepared to give; neither will most Jaina laymen (except members of the Tapagaċċha sect) invite an ascetic to their house, as this is thought by them to be forbidden in their scriptures; but they will invite a layman who has just completed Poṣadha to dine,[1] since feeding such brings puṇya to the host if done with that intention; if, however, he gives the invitation simply thinking it to be his duty to do so, he will obtain nirjarā.
That some benefit is always obtained by giving alms, the following legend shows. Once upon a time in the state of Rājagṛiha there was a poor lad, so poor that he rarely tasted rich food; but once as a great treat his mother prepared a dish magnificently formed of rice and milk and sugar! Just at that moment a sādhu came by, and the model youth passed on the tempting dish to him. As a reward the pleasing lad was born in his next incarnation as the son of a rich merchant, and, determining to become equal to a king, he became a sādhu, and in his next birth will proceed to mokṣa.
How a layman takes takes the twelve vows.When a Jaina, proceeding on the upward path, has reached the fifth step[2] in the Ċauda Guṇasthānaka, he necessarily desires to take the twelve vows, and accordingly goes to the Apāsaro and tells a guru of his wish. The guru reads out the vows and gives him an instruction on each one and its infringement similar to the foregoing notes on the vows. The layman assents to the instruction and fixes the limits of the distance he will travel, the amount of money he will- ↑ A friend of the writer's recently invited a Khojā who had become a Jaina to dine with him, after he had performed his Poṣadha vow. She was told that such a convert could be invited to dine with the saṅgha but not with the nāta, i.e. he was asked to their religious feasts (though even there he had to sit separately) but not to their caste dinners.
- ↑ See p. 187.
