The tenets of the Jains are too complicated
for description here, but it may be said that much doubt exists as
to whether it is an old religion of which Brahmanism and Buddhism are
varieties, or whether it is itself a variety of Buddhism. Indeed,
it does not seem well settled whether the pure Jain doctrine
was atheistical or theistical. At any rate, it is sufficiently
differentiated from Brahmanism by its opposite notion of castes, and
from Buddhism by its cultus of nakedness, which the Buddhists abhor.
The Jains are split into two sects--the _Digambaras_, or nude Jains,
and the _Svetambaras_, or clothed Jains, which latter sect seem to
be Buddhists, who, besides the Tirthankars (i.e. mortals who have
acquired the rank of gods by devout lives, in whom all the Jains
believe), worship also the various divinities of the Vishnu system.
The Jains themselves declare this system to date from a period ten
thousand years before Christ, and they practically support this
traditional antiquity by persistently regarding and treating the
Buddhists as heretics from their system.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108