# The Heart of Jainism

THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA
EDITED BY
J. N. FARQUHAR, M.A. LITERARY SECRETARY, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS, INDIA AND CEYLON
AND
H. D. GRISWOLD, M.A., Ph.D SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
ALREADY PUBLISHED :
| INDIAN THEISM, FROM THE VEDIC TO THE MUḤAMMADAN PERIOD. | By Nicol Macnicol, M.A., D.Litt. Pp. xvi + 292. Price 6s. net. |
| IN PREPARATION ||
| THE RELIGIOUS LITERATURE OF INDIA. | By J. N. Farquhar, M.A. |
| THE RELIGION OF THE ṚIGVEDA. | By H. D. Griswold, M.A., Ph.D. |
| THE VEDĀNTA. | By A. G. Hogg, M.A., Christian College, Madras. |
| HINDU ETHICS. | By John McKenzie, M.A., Wilson College, Bombay. |
| BUDDHISM. | By K. J. Saunders, M.A., Literary Secretary, National Council of Y.M.C.A., India and Ceylon. |
| ISLAM IN INDIA. | By H. A. Walter, M.A., Literary Secretary, National Council of Y.M.C.A., India and Ceylon. |
[Editorial preface]
EDITORIAL PREFACE
The writers of this series of volumes on the variant forms of religious life in India are governed in their work by two impelling motives.
I. They endeavour to work in the sincere and sympathetic spirit of science. They desire to understand the perplexingly involved developments of thought and life in India and dispassionately to estimate their value. They recognize the futility of any such attempt to understand and evaluate, unless it is grounded in a thorough historical study of the phenomena investigated. In recognizing this fact they do no more than share what is common ground among all modern students of religion of any repute. But they also believe that it is necessary to set the practical side of each system in living relation to the beliefs and the literature, and that, in this regard, the close and direct contact which they have each had with Indian religious life ought to prove a source of valuable light. For, until a clear understanding has been gained of the practical influence exerted by the habits of worship, by the practice of the ascetic, devotional or occult discipline, by the social organization and by the family system, the real impact of the faith upon the life of the individual and the community cannot be estimated; and, without the advantage of extended personal intercourse, a trustworthy account of the religious experience of a community can scarcely be achieved by even the most careful student.
II. They seek to set each form of Indian religion by the side of Christianity in such a way that the relationship may stand out clear. Jesus Christ has become to them the light of all their seeing, and they believe Him destined to be the light of ​the world. They are persuaded that sooner or later the age-long quest of the Indian spirit for religious truth and power will find in Him at once its goal and a new starting-point, and they will be content if the preparation of this series contributes in the smallest degree to hasten this consummation. If there be readers to whom this motive is unwelcome, they may be reminded that no man approaches the study of a religion without religious convictions, either positive or negative: for both reader and writer, therefore, it is better that these should be explicitly stated at the outset. Moreover, even a complete lack of sympathy with the motive here acknowledged need not diminish a reader’s interest in following an honest and careful attempt to bring the religions of India into comparison with the religion which to-day is their only possible rival, and to which they largely owe their present noticeable and significant revival.
It is possible that to some minds there may seem to be a measure of incompatibility between these two motives. The writers, however, feel otherwise. For them the second motive reinforces the first: for they have found that he who would lead others into a new faith must first of all understand the faith that is theirs already,—understand it, moreover, sympathetically, with a mind quick to note not its weaknesses alone but that in it which has enabled it to survive and has given it its power over the hearts of those who profess it.
The duty of the editors of the series is limited to seeing that the volumes are in general harmony with the principles here described. Each writer is alone responsible for the opinions expressed in his volume, whether in regard to Indian religions or to Christianity.
THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA
THE
HEART OF JAINISM
BY
MRS. SINCLAIR STEVENSON M.A., Sc.D. (Dublin)
OF THE IRISH MISSION IN GUJARĀT SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF SOMERVILLE COLLEGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF ‘NOTES ON MODERN JAINISM’, ‘FIRST STEPS IN GUJARĀTĪ’
‘ON SOME PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE’, ETC.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY THE
REV. G. P. TAYLOR, M.A., D.D. PRINCIPAL OF STEVENSON COLLEGE, AḤMADĀBĀD
HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDONEDINBURGHGLASGOWNEW YORK TORONTOMELBOURNEBOMBAY
1915
Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.
(Conf. Div. Aur. Augustini, i. 1.)
TO MY HUSBAND
WITH
HAPPY MEMORIES
OF
NINE YEARS’ COMRADESHIP
IN WORK AND PLAY
[Prefatory note]
Amongst the many friends, Indian and English, whose help has made the production of this little book possible, the writer owes a special debt of gratitude to the Rev. G. P. Taylor, M.A., D.D., who years ago first directed her attention to Jainism as an almost untrodden field for research, and who ever since has allowed her to make the fullest use of his unrivalled stores of oriental scholarship; to Mr. J. N. Farquhar, M.A., from whom she has received constant help and suggestion, especially in the compilation of the Historical Summary and the paragraphs on Jaina writers; and to her husband, who, when she was hindered by illness, not only prepared the index, but also undertook, together with Mr. Farquhar, the whole of the proof correcting.
Amongst her Indian friends, the writer would like to thank two Jaina pandits, who successively lectured to her in Rājkot (Kāṭhiāwāḍ) almost daily during a period of seven years, for the patience and lucidity with which they expounded their creed. Each of these gentlemen, the one representing perhaps the more modern, and the other the more conservative, points of view, most kindly re-read the MS. with her.
In her study of Jainism, however, the writer is not only indebted to pandits, but also to nuns in various Apāsarā, to officiants in beautiful Jaina temples, to wandering monks, happy-go-lucky Jaina schoolboys and thoughtful students, as well as to grave Jaina merchants and their delightful wives. Nearly all these informants spoke Gujarātī, ​but the technical words they used in discussing their faith were sometimes of Gujarātī, sometimes of Māgadhī and sometimes of Sanskrit origin. This ‘use’, which seems to be one of the idioms of Jainism, the writer has tried to reproduce by transliterating the actual words employed, believing that thus her work would retain more of the character of field-study and have less of the odour of midnight oil than if she had standardized and sanskritized all the terms.
But whatever language they spoke, every one whom the writer asked showed the same readiness to help; indeed almost every fact recorded in this book owes its presence there to the courtesy of some Jaina friend, and every page seems to the writer water-marked with some one’s kindness. The difficulty of the task has sometimes seemed overwhelming; but never perhaps does the magnificent old motto Dominus illuminatio mea prove a greater inspiration than when one is attempting sympathetically to decipher an alien creed; and to no one does it, together with its sister-saying Magna est veritas et praevalebit, ring a happier carillon of hope than to the foreign missionary.
MARGARET STEVENSON.
Dublin,
St. Patrick’s Day, 1915.
[Introduction]
To the general public Jainism is little more than a mere name, and even students of the Religions of India have often failed to give it the attention it well may claim. True, out of India's 315 millions less than one million and a quarter (1,248,162) to-day profess the Jaina faith, and the last twenty years have witnessed a steady decrease in the number of its adherents; but, its numerical weakness notwithstanding, Jainism can make its own distinct appeal for a more informed acquaintance with its special tenets. If Professor Hopkins is right, and we believe he is, in affirming that Jainism ‘represents a theological mean between Brahmanism and Buddhism’, then assuredly a serious study of Jainism becomes incumbent on all who may seek to understand aright either the early Brahmanic ritual or the trenchant and for long effective Buddhist protest which that elaborate ritual evoked.
In that sixth century before Christ which in so many countries witnessed an earnest aspiration after higher truths and nobler lives, the country of Bihār was strangely agitated by the teachings of not a few bold reformers, men then styled heretics. Mahāvīra, Buddha, Gośāla, Jamāli, all founded sects of their own, and others there were who vied with these either in propounding rival heresies or in establishing separate monastic organizations. Yet of all these ancient Orders one only has survived in India down to the present day, and that one is the Jainism founded whether by Mahāvīra himself or by his reputed master ​Pāraśanātha. It were surely at once an interesting and an instructive study to search out the causes that enabled Jainism thus to weather the storms that in India wrecked so many of the other faiths. Quietly, unobtrusively, Jainism has held on the even tenor of its way: but why? Here, for the student of Comparative Religion, lies a fascinating problem. Dr. Hoernle’s discussion of this subject in his Presidential Address of 1898 before the Asiatic Society of Bengal was singularly luminous, emphasizing as it did the place accorded from the very first to the lay adherent as an integral part of the Jaina organization. In the Buddhist Order, on the other hand, the lay element received no formal recognition whatsoever. Lacking thus any ‘bond with the broad strata of the secular life of the people’, Buddhism, under the fierce assault on its monastic settlements made by the Moslems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, proved incompetent to maintain itself and simply disappeared from the land. In contrast therewith, Jainism, less enterprising but more speculative than Buddhism, and lacking the active missionary spirit that in early times dominated the latter, has been content to spend a quiet life within comparatively narrow borders, and can show to-day in Western and Southern India not only prosperous monastic establishments but also lay communities, small perhaps, yet wealthy and influential. Adopting the terms of present-day ecclesiastical discussion, one may say the survival of the Jainas has been due in large measure to their having opened the doors of the Synod of their Church to lay representation.
Yet another reason that well may attract to the study of Jainism lies in the fact that a singular interest attaches to its doctrines and its history. Its first home was near Benares, and thus lay to the east of that ‘holy land’ which was the seat of the Vedic cult. But with the process of years it has migrated westwards and northwards, with the remarkable consequence that to-day ‘there are no Jainas ​among the indigenous inhabitants of Bengal, which includes Bihār, where the religion had its origin, and Orissa, where the caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri bear witness to its popularity in the early centuries of our era’. While to the north in Mathurā, Delhi, Jaipur, and Ajmer, it is still fairly well represented, the chief seats of Jaina influence in modern times are the cities and trading marts of Western India. The mercantile communities of Gujarāt and Mārwār owe not a little of their prosperity to Jaina enterprise, and the Order is said to be largely recruited from the cultivators in the Carnatic district of Belgaum. To trace through the centuries this westward trend of Jainism and to investigate its causes were surely a subject worthy of engaging the attention of students of the Indian religions.
Again, in its origin, Jainism was a protest on the part of the Kṣatriyas, or warrior caste, against the exclusiveness of priests who desired to limit entry into the mendicant stage (Sannyāsin Āśrama) to persons of the Brahman caste alone. As Professor Hopkins graphically puts it, ‘The Kings of the East were impatient of the Western Church: they were pleased to throw it over. The leaders in the “reformation” were the younger sons of noble blood...they were princes and had royalty to back them.’ But time brings its revenges, and this Jaina religion, cradled in the aristocracy of a military caste, was destined to become the chief exponent of a grotesque exaggeration of the principle of ahiṅisā, or ‘non-injury’ to any living being. The explanation of a change so radical cannot but prove of the deepest interest.
Yet once again Jainism, with its explicit belief in a plurality of eternal spirits, every material entity having its own individual spirit, jīvātmā, no less expressly disbelieves in the Supreme Spirit, the Paramātmā. Jainism is definitely atheistic, if by atheism we mean the denial of ​a divine creative spirit. In the philosophy of the Jainas no place is reserved for God. Indeed it seems probable that the first Jainas did not acknowledge gods at all. They early taught that one should not say ‘God rains’, but just ‘the cloud rains’. Thus one of their fundamental principles would seem to have been that there is no power higher than man. This principle, however, it is instructive to note, soon proved unworkable, and it has long since been practically abandoned. The Jainas do worship, yet are the objects of their worship neither God nor gods. Denying God, they worship man, to wit, the Venerable (Arhat), the Conqueror (Jina), the Founder of the (four) Orders (Tīrthaṅkara). Now this revolt from God-worship, and the acceptance in its stead of man-worship, this startling anticipation of Positivism, may well claim one’s attention, if only as affording some idea of the possibilities of intellectual frailty.
Within the last thirty years a small band of scholars, pre-eminent amongst whom are the late Hofrath Professor Bühler, Professor Jacobi, and Dr. Hoernle, have effected a great advance in our knowledge of Jainism. For long it had been thought that Jainism was but a sub-sect of Buddhism, but, largely as a consequence of the researches of the Orientalists just mentioned, that opinion has been finally relinquished, and Jainism is now admitted to be one of the most ancient monastic organizations of India. So far from being merely a modern variation of Buddhism, Jainism is the older of the two heresies, and it is almost certain that Mahāvīra, though a contemporary of Buddha, predeceased him by some fifty years. A flood of light has been shed on the origin of Jainism, on its relations both to Brahmanism and to Buddhism, on the sects of the Jainas, ​the ‘white-clad’ and the ‘space-clad’ votaries and the non-idolatrous Sthānakavāsīs, on the formation of the Jaina Siddhānta or Canon, and on the Councils of Pāṭaliputra and Vallabhi that legislated regarding the Jaina Scriptures: also the highest linguistic scholarship has been brought to bear upon translations of a few of the Sacred Books of the Jainas. For all this good work accomplished, students of Jainism cannot be too grateful. But one whole department of this large subject still awaits elucidation. One can learn much concerning early Jainism and of its development in mediaeval times: but modern Jainism, its present-day practices and its present-day teachings, these still remain very much a terra incognita. Bühler’s Indian sect of the Jainas and an article by Dr. Burgess on the Jaina Temple Ritual tell us something, but very much remains untold.
And just here a necessary caution should be given. It is not always safe to assume that the meaning a technical term bore in early times remains the same in the Jainism of to-day. For instance, the term Tīrtha-kara, or Tīrthaṅkara, would seem originally to have denoted the man who has ‘made the passage’ across the ocean of worldly illusion (saṁsāra), who has reached that further shore where he is, and will for ever be, free from action and desire: thus, the man who has attained unto a state of utter and absolute quiescence, and has entered into a rest that knows no change nor ending, a passionless and ineffable peace. But no Jaina whom I have ever consulted has assigned this meaning to the word Tīrthaṅkara. Widely different is the explanation given me by those whom I have asked, and they all agree. A Tīrthaṅkara, they say, is one who has ‘made’, has founded, the four ‘tīrthas’. But what then is a tīrtha? Tīrtha, derived from the root tr, ‘to save’, is, they affirm, a technical term indicating ‘the means of salvation’, the means par excellence; and the ċaturvidha saṅgha, or that ‘fourfold ​Communion’ within which all who take refuge find ultimate salvation, consists of the four tīrthas, or ‘orders’, namely, those of (1) sādhu or monk, (2) sādhvī or nun, (3) śrāvaka or lay-brother, and (4) śrāvikā or lay-sister. These four tīrthas are thus, as it were, four boats that will infallibly carry the passengers they bear unto the desired haven of deliverance (mokṣa). Hence the Tīrthaṅkara is one who is the Founder (with a very large F) of the four ‘orders’ that collectively constitute the Communion or Saṅgha.
Another illustration of a term whose meaning may have changed with time is Nirvāṇa. Originally the prefix nir, or nis, was held to be intensive, and hence nirvāṇa, from the root vā, ‘to blow’, came to mean ‘blown out, extinguished’. Thus, according to the early Jainas, Nirvāṇa is that state in which the energy of past actions (karma) has become extinguished, and henceforward the spirit (jīvātmā), though still existent as an individual spirit, escapes re-embodiment, and remains for ever free from new births and deaths. But nowadays some Jainas at least regard the prefix nir as a mere negative, and thus with them Nirvāṇa implies that state in which ‘not a breath’ reaches the emancipated one. The underlying conception is that of a constant steady flame with ‘never a breath’ to make even the slightest tremulous quiver.
Evidently, then, the study of the Jainism of the past, helpful though it be, does not of itself alone suffice to acquaint one accurately with the current phases of that faith, and accordingly some account, more or less detailed, of modern Jainism becomes a distinct desideratum. It is in the hope of supplying this felt need that Dr. Margaret Stevenson has prepared the present volume. She has named it ‘The Heart of Jainism’, and aptly so, for in the writing of it she has been careful to indicate not so much the causes that contributed to the origin and development of that religion as the conditions that now obtain in it, and its present-day observances. The life-blood that is coursing ​through its veins and is invigorating it, this she seeks to gauge. She would fain register, and not unsympathetically, its pulse-beats and its heart-throbs. For the execution of this self-imposed task Mrs. Stevenson has special qualifications. More than eight years ago, on her arrival as a bride in Aḥmadābād, she and her husband visited with me the large Jaina temple erected in this city so recently as 1848, through the munificence of Śeth Haṭṭhisiṁha. We were on that occasion conducted past the enclosing cloisters (bhamatī) with their fifty-two small shrines to the inner court, and then admitted to the temple itself, passing through first the open porch (maṇḍapa) and next the hall of assembly (sabhā maṇḍapa), till we stood on the very threshold of the adytum (gabhāro), and there we witnessed the ceremonial waving of lights (āratī). The pathos of this service and its sadness made a deep impression, and from that evening Mrs. Stevenson has been a keen and constant student of Jainism. Her knowledge of the Gujarātī language has enabled her to acquire much information at first hand both from the Jaina paṇḍits who have for years assisted her in her research-work, and from the vernacular text-books which have of late been issuing from the local printing-presses. Her kindly sympathies have won her many friends in the Jaina community, and have even procured her a welcome entrée into the seclusion of a Jaina nunnery. Time and again she has been present by invitation at Jaina functions seldom witnessed by any foreigner. Her long residence in Kāṭhiāwāḍ has afforded her opportunities for repeated visits to those marvellous clusters of stately temples that crown the holy hills of Girnār and Ābū and Śatruñjaya. In her admirable Notes on Modern Jainism, severely simple notes published five years ago, Mrs. Stevenson gave us a first instalment of the rich fruits of her patient research, but since then she has been able to glean a more abundant harvest. The contribution that she now offers to the public will prove simply ​invaluable to the Christian missionary and to the student of the religions of India, but we further bespeak for it a hearty welcome from all who delight in fine scholarship and literary grace.
Geo. P. Taylor.
Stevenson College,
    AḤmadābād.
* ↑ E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India, p. 283.
* ↑ Imperial Gazetteer of India (New Edition), i. 417.
* ↑ E. W. Hopkins, op. cit., p. 282.
* ↑ As now generally accepted, the dates are for Mahāvīra, 599–527 B.C. and for Buddha, 557–477 B.C. If these dates be correct, then Mahāvīra and Buddha were for thirty years contemporaries.
CONTENTS
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* —— Uvāsagadasāo, Calcutta, 1890.
* Hopkins, E. W., The Religions of India, Boston, 1895.
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* Smith, Vincent A., The Early History of India (third edition), Oxford, 1914.
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* Stevenson, Mrs. Sinclair, Notes on Modern Jainism, Oxford, 1910.
* Weber, A., Sacred Literature of the Jainas (tr.), Indian Antiquary (I.A.), xvii (1888)–xxi (1892).
Jaina Architecture and Archaeology.
* Bühler, J. G. Specimens of Jaina Sculptures from Mathurā, Epigraphia Indica, i (1892) and ii (1894).
* Burgess, J., Digambara Jaina Iconography, I.A., xxxii (1903).
* Fergusson, J., History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (new edition), London, 1910.
* Fergusson, J., and J. Burgess, Cave Temples, London, 1880.
* Guérinot, A. A., Répertoire d’épigraphie jaina, Paris, 1908.
* Smith, Vincent A., A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, Oxford, 1911.
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