Chapter M: S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of (3)

In another country, but still among a race which has inherited the habit of looking at questions between man and animals not exclusively from the man’s point of view, a learned professor proposed to an old gardener at Yezd that they should dig up an ant-hill to ascertain if the local prejudice were true which insisted that inside each ant-hill there lodged two scorpions. The old Persian declined to be a party to any such proceeding. “As long as the scorpions stay inside,” he said with decision, “we have no right to molest them and to do so would bring ill-luck.”

These anecdotes show, amusingly and convincingly, the wall of demarcation between Eastern and Western thought by which the son of the West is apt to find his passage barred. They serve my purpose in quoting them the better because they are not connected with the religious sect whose precepts I am going to sketch. They illustrate what I believe to be true, namely, that this sect and Buddhism itself would not have made their way in so wonderful a manner, seemingly almost without effort, had they not found the ground prepared by a racial tendency to fly to the doctrine of _Ahimsa_, or “non-killing,” which forms part of their systems.

No religion prevails unless it appeals to some chord, if not of the human heart everywhere, at least of the particular human hearts to which it is directed. In the West a religion based on Vegetarianism would not have a chance. Not that there exists no trace of the life-preserving instinct among Western peoples—far from that. All nice children have it and all saints of the type of him of Assisi. Other people have it who are neither children, nor saints, nor yet lunatics (“though by your smiling you seem to say so”). I know an old hero of the Siege of Delhi who to this day would stoop to lift a worm from his path. But the sentiment, which in the West is rather a secret thing, forming a sort of freemasonry among those who feel it, asserts its sway in the East in the broad light of day. No one there would mind giving the fullest publicity to his opinion that the scorpion has as good a right to live undisturbed in his domestic ant-hill as you have in your suburban villa.

Long before the Jainas made _Ahimsa_ a gateway to perfection, innumerable Asiatics practised and even preached the very same rule. It was the bond of union between all the religious teachers and ascetics who constituted a well-defined feature in Indian life from remote if not from the earliest antiquity. The founders of Jainism and of Buddhism, too, were Gurus like the rest, only they possessed an intensified magnetic influence and, at least in Buddha’s case, an unique genius. Every Eastern religion has been taught by a Guru, not excepting the most divine of them all.[4]

Footnote 4:

“It is stated of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion that
without a parable spoke He not to the people. Christ, in fact, acted
and taught as an _Oriental Guru_, a character which none of the
European writers of Christ’s life has invested Him with” (Rev. J.
Long: v. “Oriental Proverbs” in the Report of the Proceedings of the
Second Congress of Orientalists).

In the occurrence of a new religious evolution much depends on the individual, but much also on the fulness of time. When Buddhism and Jainism arose, the psychological moment was come for a change or modification in the current faith. To some degree, both were a revolt against Sacerdotalism. Men were told that they could work out their salvation without priestly aid or intervention. The new teachers, though each springing from the class of the feudal nobility, won to their side the surging wave of the only kind of democratic yearning which, till now, Asia has known—the yearning for religious equality. Professor Hermann Jacobi (the foremost authority on Jainism, to whom all who study the subject owe an unbounded debt) suggests that there was a certain friction between the highly meritorious of the noble and the priestly castes because the priests were inclined to look down on the layman saint. To this category belonged Sakya Muni, who was the younger son of a prince, or, as we should say, a feudal lord, and who renounced rank and riches to become a recluse. The same family history is told of Mahavira, whom the Jainas claim to be their founder. For a long time Europeans believed the two religions to have but one source, and Jainism was dismissed as a Buddhist sect. The Jainas, however, always strongly held that they had a founder of their own, namely, Mahavira, and they even declared that Buddha was not his master but his disciple. After much research, Professor Jacobi decided the case in their favour by assigning to them a separate origin. Both Sakya Muni and Mahavira are generally believed to have flourished in the sixth century B.C.

The confusion of the Jainas with the Buddhists and even with the Brahmans has made it difficult to reckon their present numbers: in the census of 1901 they are estimated at 1,334,138, chiefly living in the Bombay Presidency, but this does not tell us their real number. Jainas are to be found almost everywhere in Upper India, in the West and South and along the Ganges. They inhabit the towns more than the country. In treating ancient Indian religions the living document is always round the corner, ready to be called into the witness-box, and the Jainas of to-day can give a good account of themselves. Every one has a good word for them; a friend of mine, than whom few know India better, describes them thus: “A tall, fair, handsome, good and humble lot they are and terribly bullied they are by their more bellicose fellow-countrymen, who all look on Jainas as made for them to pilfer, but the Jainas never turn on their persecutors.” In spite of their meekness, they are good men of business, which is proved by their remarkable success in commerce. Perhaps it is not such bad policy to be peaceful, and helpful, and honest as a cynical century supposes.

The Jainas say of Mahavira that he was one of a long line of holy ascetics twenty-four of whom are venerated in their temples under the name of Tirthakaras or Jinas, “Conquerors” in the sense of having conquered the flesh. Needless to point out that the founders of great religious systems invariably accept this principle of evolution: they complete what others began, and in due time a new manifestation will arrive either in the form of a more perfect revelation of themselves or in that of a fore-destined successor. The Buddhists now await Matreya, or “the Buddha of kindness.” The Jainas have not added to their twenty-four glorified beings, but there is nothing to prevent them from doing so. To these specimens of perfected humanity they have raised some of the most glorious temples ever lifted by the hand of man towards heaven. Tier on tier mount the exquisitely beautiful towers of the Jaina cathedrals in the most lonely part of the Muklagerri hills. They seem like the Parsifal music turned into stone: an allegory of the ascent of the soul from corruption to incorruption, from change to permanency. The desire to worship something finds a vent in the reverence paid to the Tirthakaras, but the Jaina religion admits neither relics nor the iteration of prayers. The building of splendid shrines and of refuges for man and beast are the particular means of grace open to the Jaina who cannot comply in all respects with the exacting demands of his scriptures, which, were they literally fulfilled, would leave no one on the world but ascetics. The wealthy Jaina is only too glad to avail himself of the chance of acquiring some merit, however far it must fall short of the highest. Besides this, in moments of religious fervour temple-building becomes a frenzy: whole races are swept along by the blind impulse to incarnate their spiritual cravings in spires or pagodas or minarets pointing to the sky—the eternal symbol. The greatest of Jaina temples mark the epoch of some such wave of spiritual emotion.

The Jaina scriptures, which were first collected from aural report and written down by a learned man in the sixth century A.D., are really a Rule of Discipline for monks, and not a guide for the mass of mankind. If we could imagine the only Christian Scripture being the immortal book of Thomas à Kempis, we should form the idea of a very similar state of things. It is surprising not how little but how much of this rigid rule is followed by every Jaina to this day, be he monk or layman. The vegetarian principle involved in _Ahimsa_ is observed rigorously by all—clearly with no bad effect on health after a trial of about twenty-four centuries, for the Jainas’ physique is excellent, and they are less subject to disease than the other communities. They strain and boil water before drinking, and whatever may be said of the motive, the practice must be highly commended. They are also often to be seen wearing a mouth-cloth to prevent them from swallowing flies, and they carry little brooms with which they sweep insects out of their path. The hospitals for sick animals begin to be better managed than formerly, when they incurred much censure as mere conglomerations of hopeless suffering to relieve which practical means were not taken. A folly adopted by the more fanatical Jainas at the time of their origin was that of going “sky-clad,” which makes it probable that they were the gymnosophists known to the Greeks. They saw well later to limit this practice to certain times and occasions or to abandon it for the far more pleasant one of wearing white garments. Buddha warned his followers against the “sky-clad” aberration. He disagreed with the Jainas on a more vital point in the view he took of penance and self-inflicted torture. It shows the high intellectuality of the man that towards the end of his life he pronounced penance, though he had gone through much of it himself, to be vanity of vanities. The Jainas took the opposite view: “Subdue the body just as fire consumes old wood.” They hold that merit is bound up with a certain definite and tangible thing: the Buddhist, more philosophically, makes it consist in intention. This is the chief doctrinal difference between Jaina and Buddhist, and though each is bound to charity and the Jaina is particularly enjoined by his scriptures not to turn other people’s religion into ridicule, it has to be confessed that in their frequent disputes they spare no pains and neglect no arts of Socratic reasoning to reduce each other’s theories to an absurdity. Irony is a weapon always used in Indian religious discussion.

Mahavira himself “fulfilled the law” by allowing gnats, flies, and other things to bite him and crawl over him for four months without ever once losing his equanimity. It is told that he met all sorts of pleasant or unpleasant events with an even mind whether they arose from divine powers, men, or animals. The Jainas did not deny that there were divine powers: there might be any number of them, and the influence they wielded for good or for ill (I think especially for ill) was not inconsiderable. Only they were not morally admirable like a man victorious through suffering. The greater willingness of the Jainas to admit gods into the wheel of being, and even to allow some homage to be paid to them, was one reason why they clashed less with the Brahmans. After the subsidence of Buddhism the Jainas managed to go on existing, somewhat despised and annoyed, but tolerated.

While both Buddhists and Jainas place the prohibition to take life at the head of their law, its application is infinitely more thoroughgoing among the Jainas, who also attach to it ideas which have no place in Buddhist metaphysics. From the Jaina position, it seems to imply a tendency to primitive animism, though it is hard to say whether this comes from a real process of retrogression or simply from the Indo-Aryan desire for a synthesis—the more easily attained the more you assume. It is startling to hear that in the last census over eight millions were returned as animists—it proves that the old credences die hard. The Jainas took into their soul-world fire, water, wind, shooting plants and germinating seeds. The disciplinary results must have been inconvenient, but a religion was never less popular because it put its devotees to inconvenience. Those who still clung to animistic beliefs were already prepared to see a soul in the flickering fire, the rushing water, the growing blade. We all have odds and ends of animism; did not Coventry Patmore say: “There is something human in a tree?” With more detail the Jaina observes that trees and plants are born and grow old; they distinguish the seasons, they turn towards the sun, the seeds grow up: how, then, shall we deny all knowledge to them? “The asoka buds and blossoms when touched by a fair girl’s feet.” Can we help recalling the familiar lines in the “Sensitive Plant?”—

“I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.”

Now, Science, which is on the way to becoming very kind to man’s early beliefs, comes forward in the person of Mr. Francis Darwin to tell us that plants _have_ “mind” and “intelligence,” especially the hop and the bryony. All fairy-tales will come true if we wait long enough.

Once, and once only, in Jaina writings I have noticed it given as a distinct reason for sparing plants and trees, that they may contain the transmigrated soul of a man. Even in the case of animals the doctrine of transmigration is rarely adduced as the reason for not killing them, though it is fully accepted by Jainas in common with all the Indian sects sprung from Brahmanism by which it was started. Coming to the Indian views of animals from those which antiquity represented as the preaching of Pythagoras, we expect to see this argument put forward at every turn, but it is not. In Jaina writings the incentive is humanity: to do to others as we would be done by. It is true that as an aid to this incentive, the cruel are threatened with the most awful punishments. In Indian sacred writings one is wearied by the nice balance constantly drawn between every deed and its consequences to the doer for a subsequent millennium. In mediæval monkish legends we find exactly the same device for keeping the adept in the paths of virtue, but wherever we find it, we sigh for the spontaneous emotion of pity of the Good Samaritan who never reflected “If I do not get off my ass and go to help that Jew, how very bad it will be for my Karman!”

We ought not to forget in this connexion that rewards and punishments have not the same meaning to the Indian as to us: they are not extraneous prizes or penalties, but the working out of a mathematical problem which we both set and solve for ourselves. It is utterly impossible to escape from the consequences of our evil acts: they are debts which must be paid, though we may set about performing good acts which will make our future happiness exceed our future misery in time and extent. The highest good comes of itself, automatically, to him who merits it, as is illustrated with great beauty in the Jaina story of the White Lotus. This flower, the symbol of perfection, bloomed in the centre of a pool and was descried by many who made violent efforts to reach it, but they were all set fast in the mud. Then came a holy ascetic who stood motionless on the bank. “O white Lotus, fly up!” he said, and the White Lotus flew to his breast. Even among Indian sects which all abound in this kind of composition the Jainas are remarkable for their wealth of moral tales and apothegms. As is well known, they possess a parable called “The Three Merchants,” closely resembling the parable of the Talents as told by Matthew and Luke, and still more exactly agreeing with the version given in the so-called “Gospel according to the Hebrews.”

The theory of Karman suggests several modern scientific speculations such as the idea that the brain retains an ineffaceable print of every impression received by it, and again, the extreme view of heredity which makes the individual the moral and physical slave of former generations. It is a theory which has the advantage of disposing of many riddles. Different sects have slightly varying opinions about the nature of the Karman: the Jainas see in this receptacle of good and evil deeds a material, though supersensual, reality with a physical basis. Each individual consists of five parts: the visible body, the vital energy thought to consist of fire, or, as we might say, of electricity, the Karman and two subliminal selves which appear to be only latent in most persons, but by which, when called into activity, the individual can transform himself, travel to distances and do other unusual things. That each man is provided with a wraith or double is an old and widely-spread belief; but in Western lore the double does not seem to be commanded by its pair: it rather moves like an unconscious, wandering photograph of him.

The Jainas have the same word for the soul and for life: _gîva_, and this name they bestow on the whole range of things which they consider as living: the elements, seeds, plants, animals, men, gods. One would think that the sense of personal identity would become vague in the contemplation of voyages over so vast a sea of being, but, on the contrary, this identity is the one thing about which the individual seems perfectly sure. We have frequently such utterances as: “My own self is the doer and the undoer of misery and happiness; my own self is friend and foe.” A sort of void seems spread round the individual which even family affection, very strong though it has always been in India, is powerless to bridge. A lovely testimony to this affection, and at the same time an avowal of its unavailingness, is to be found in the one single exception to the Jaina law that the wholly virtuous man must desire nothing, not even Nirvana must he desire, much less earthly love or friendship. But he may desire to take upon him the painful illness of one of his dear kindred. It is added sadly, however, that never has such a desire been fulfilled, for one man cannot take upon him the pains of another, neither can he feel what another feels.

“Man is born alone, he dies alone, he falls alone, he rises alone. His passions, consciousness, intellect, perceptions and impressions belong to him exclusively. Another cannot save him or help him. He grows old, his hair turns white, even this dear body he must relinquish—none can stay the hour.”

Again it is written:—

“Man! thou art thy own friend, why wishest thou for a friend beyond thyself?”

The isolation of the soul with its paramount importance to its owner (that is to say, to itself) makes it obligatory to pursue its interests even at the expense of the most sacred affections. The Pagan, the Jew, the Moslem could not have been brought to yield assent to this doctrine, but it meets us continually in Catholic hagiology; for instance, St. François de Sales told Madame de Chantal that she ought, if needful, to walk into the cloister over the dead body of her son. So in a Jaina story, father, mother, wife, child, sister, brother try in vain to wrest a holy young man from his resolve to leave them. In vain the old people say: “We will do all the work if you will only come home; come, child! We will pay your debts; you need not stay longer than you like—only come home!” The quite admirable young man (who sets one furiously wishing for a stout birch rod) proceeds on his way unmoved. But it is remarked, “At such appeals the weak break down like old, worn-out oxen going up hill.” We prefer the weak.

Who was the first anchorite? Perhaps in very early states of society a few individuals got lost in the mountain or forest, where they lived on fruits and nuts, and then, after a long time, some of them were re-discovered, and, because they seemed so strange and mysterious after their long seclusion, they were credited with supernatural gifts. Animals do not go away alone except in the rare case of being seized with mania, or in the universal case of feeling the approach of death. The origin of hermits cannot, therefore, be explained by analogy with animals.

One can conceive that a hermit’s life may have great attractions, but scarcely that of a Jaina hermit, who is expected to employ his leisure in the most painful mortification of the flesh. Though other-worldly advantages form the great object which spurs men to choose such a lot we must not forget that this sort of life is held to confer powers which are, by no means, other-worldly. By it the Brahman becomes superior to caste, being incapable of pollution: if he wished he could drink after the most miserable Western had touched the cup.

The theory of asceticism is very much alike everywhere, and the extraordinary faculties claimed by the Jainas for their holy men are the portion, more or less, of the Indian holy man in general. These faculties may be briefly described as an abnormal development of the subliminal self, but that is not an adequate account of the vastness of their range. One feels often inclined to ask—without granting revelation or, indeed, the existence of an omniscient being who could give it—_how_ does the Buddhist or Jaina acquire perfect certainty that he knows all about his own and man’s destiny? The question of authority is of primary importance in all religions: in what way does Buddhist or Jaina solve it? It is evident that scepticism based on this very ground does sometimes harass the soul of the Jaina novice: “The weak,” we are told, “when bitten by a snarling dog or annoyed by flies and gnats, will begin to say: ‘_I have not seen the next world, all may end with death._’” It startles one to hear from the mouth of the devil’s advocate in an ancient Eastern homily a cry so modern, so Western:—

“Death means heaven, he longs to receive it,
But what shall I do if I don’t believe it?”[5]

Footnote 5:

“Verses written in India,” p. 13.

Sir Alfred Lyall’s questioner found none to answer him, but the Jaina has an answer which, if accepted, must prove entirely satisfactory. The superlatively virtuous individual possesses an effortless certainty about the secrets of life. In a state superinduced by means which, though arduous, are at the disposal of all, the soul can view itself, read its history, past, present and to come, know the souls of others, remember what happened in former births, understand the heavenly bodies and the universe. Here is nothing miraculous: a veil is lifted, and hidden things become plain. It is as if a man who had cataract in both eyes underwent a successful operation—after which he sees.

The supersensual perception of Jaina, or Joghi, or Guru is much akin to the “infused knowledge” ascribed to the saints of the Thebaid. He knows—because he knows. By the devout, information derived from these persons is accepted as readily as we should accept information about radium from a qualified scientific man. The most confident of all that the information is true is he who gives it: fraud must be dismissed finally as the key to any such phenomena.

The Indian mind has grasped a great idea in referring what we call spirit to fixed laws no less than what we call matter. But in spirit it sees a force infinitely exceeding the force of matter. “The holy monk,” say the Jaina scriptures, “might reduce millions to ashes by the fire of his wrath.” Besides such tremendous powers as these he has all the minor accomplishments of the spiritualist or hypnotist: thought-reading, levitation, clairvoyance, &c., and he can always tame wild beasts. He is under strict obligations to use his powers with discretion. It is not right to make profit out of them: that man is anathema who lives by divination from dreams, diagrams, sticks, bodily changes, the cries of animals. The Jainas denounce magic not less strongly than the other religious teachers of the East. This is interesting because the reasons are lacking which are commonly held to explain the world-wide prejudice against magic: the Jainas do not attribute it to the agency of evil spirits, nor can their dislike of it be attributed to the professional jealousy of priests in regard to rival thaumaturgists. For the Jaina the power of magic-working lies in every one, and those who have developed their other spiritual powers have also this one at their command, but to avail themselves of it is an enormous sin. There is a weird story showing what infamies a magic-working “ascetic” may perpetrate. A monk carried off, by magical arts, all the women he met, till the king of that country trapped him in a hollow tree and had him put to death. The women were set free and returned to their husbands, except one, who refused to go back because she had fallen desperately in love with her seducer. A very wise man suggested that the monk’s bones should be pounded and mixed with milk, and then given to the woman to drink: this was done and she was cured of her passion.

Over the whole East, the report that some one was working miracles, even the most beneficent, raised both suspicion and jealousy. This was why secrecy was recommended about all such acts.

How far the belief in the extraordinary gifts of the ascetic rests on hallucination, and how far men in an artificially created abnormal condition can do things of which hypnotic manifestations are but the outer edge, it is not my purpose to inquire. The Jaina monks are said sometimes to fast for four days, and no doubt the stimulus of starvation (especially when the brain has not been weakened by long disease), produces an ecstatic state which men have everywhere supposed to indicate religious perfection. This may be observed even in birds, which from some difficulty in swallowing, die of starvation: I had a canary that sang for days before it died a sweet incessant song, the like of which I never heard: it seemed not earthly.

The best side in Eastern religions is not their thaumaturgy but the steady ethical tendency which pushes itself up out of the jungle of extravagance and self-delusion. Though we may not have much sympathy with the profession of a “houseless” saint, it is impossible to deny the moral elevation of such a picture of him as is drawn in the Jaina conversion story of “The True Sacrifice.” A holy man, born in the highest Brahmanical caste, but who had found wisdom in Jaina vows, went on a long journey and walked and walked till he came to Benares, where he found a very learned Brahman who was deeply versed in astronomy and in the Vedas. When the “Houseless” arrived, the priest was about to offer up sacrifice, and perhaps because he did not wish to be disturbed at such a moment, he told him rudely to go away—he would have no beggars there. The holy man was not angry; he had not come to extort food or water, but from the pure desire to save souls. He quietly told the priest that he was ignorant of the essence of the Vedas, of the true meaning of sacrifice, of the government of the heavenly bodies. There must have been a peculiar effluence of sanctity flowing from the “Houseless” as the priest took his rebukes with meekness, and merely asked for enlightenment. Then the seer delivered his message. It is not the tonsure that makes the priest or repetition of the sacred syllable _om_ that makes the saint. It is not by dwelling in woods or by wearing clothes of bark or grass that salvation may be reached. Equanimity, chastity, knowledge, and penance are the ways to holiness. His actions alone colour a man’s soul: as his works are, so is he. Persuaded of the truth, the priest addressed the “Houseless” as the truest of sacrificers, the most learned of all who know the Vedas, the inspired exponent of Brahmanhood, and begged him to accept his alms. But the mendicant refused: he only conjured the priest out of pity for his own soul to join the order of the “Houseless.” After having been rightly schooled in Jaina precepts, the Brahman followed his advice, and in due time he became a very great saint like his instructor.

As the Jaina scriptures are in effect a manual of discipline for monks, it is natural that they should be severe on womankind. Not that a woman’s soul is worth less than a man’s or, rather, since spirit is sexless, the distinction does not exist. A woman may be as good a saint as a man; a nun may be as meritorious as a monk. The identity of mysticism independent of creed was never more apparent than in the beautiful saying of a Jaina nun: “As a bird dislikes the cage, so do I dislike the world,” which might have been uttered by any of the self-consumed spirits of the Latin Church from St. Teresa downwards. I have never come across an allusion to being born again as a woman as a punishment. But though the fullest potentiality of merit is allowed to woman in the abstract, the Eternal Feminine is looked upon in the concrete as man’s worst snare. “Women are the greatest temptation in the world.” The Jaina books are Counsels of Perfection and not a Decalogue framed for common humanity: they give one the idea of being intended for preternaturally good people, and never more so than in the manner in which they treat the dreadful snares and temptations for which women are answerable: instead of a Venusberg, we are shown—the domestic hearth! The story in question might be called “The Woes of the Model Husband!” A girl who vowed that she would do anything rather than be parted from the dear object of her affections, has no sooner settled the matter once for all by marriage than she begins to scold and trample on the poor man’s head. Her spouse is sent on a thousand errands, not one moment can he call his own. Countless are the lady’s wants and her commands keep pace with them: “Do look for the bodkin; go and get some fruit; bring wood to cook the vegetables; why don’t you come and rub my back instead of standing there doing nothing? Are my clothes all right? Where is the scent-bottle? I want the hair-dresser. Where is my basket to put my things in? And my trinkets? There, I want my shoes and my umbrella. Bring me my comb and the ribbon to tie up my hair. Get the looking-glass and a tooth-brush. I must have a needle and thread. You really ought to look after the stores, the rainy season will be here in no time.” These and many more are the young wife’s behests, the appalling list of which might well intimidate those about to marry, but there is worse to come. When “the joy of their lives, the crown of their wedded bliss” arrives in the shape of a baby, it is the unfortunate husband who is set to mind it: he has to get up in the night to sing lullabies to it “just as if he were a nurserymaid,” and ashamed though he is of such a humiliation, he is actually put to wash the baby-linen! “All this has been done by many men who for the sake of pleasure have stooped so low; they become the equals of slaves, animals, beasts of burden, _mere nobodies_.” Would not most readers take this for a quotation from one of Ibsen’s plays rather than from a sacred volume which was composed a considerable time before the beginning of our era?

The Indian pessimist is withheld from suicide by the dread of a worse existence beyond the pyre. He is the coward of conscience to a much greater extent than the weary Occidental, because his sense of the unseen is so much stronger. In the Jaina system, however, suicide is permitted under certain circumstances. After twelve years of rigorous penance a man is allowed the supreme favour of “a religious death”—in other words, he may commit suicide by starvation. This is called Itvara. The civilised Indian does not seem to have the power of dying when he pleases without the assistance of starvation which is possessed by some of the higher savage races.

The soul may be re-born in any earthly form from the lowest to the highest, but there are other possibilities before it when it leaves its mortal coil. Those who are very bad, too bad to disgrace the earth again—above all, the cruel—are consigned to an _Inferno_ more awful than Dante’s, though not without points of striking resemblance to it. The very good who abounded in charity and in truth, but who yet lived in the world the life of the world, become gods, glorified beings enjoying a great measure of happiness and power, but not eternal. Far beyond the joys of this heaven, which are still thinkable, is the unthinkable bliss of the Perfect, of the Conquerors, of the Changeless. The human mind could not adjust the idea of evolution more scientifically to the soul’s destiny.

It is unnecessary to say that the number who become even gods is very small. A great deal is achieved if a man is simply born again as a man, for though Jaina and Buddhist thinks that man’s lot is wretched (or, at least that it ought to be when we consider its inherent evils), yet it must be distinctly remembered that he thinks the life of beasts far more wretched. Leopardi’s “Song of the Nomadic Shepherd in Asia,” in which he makes the world-weary shepherd envy the fate of his sheep, is steeped in Western not in Eastern pessimism: only in the last lines, which really contradict the rest, we find the true Eastern note:—

“Perchance in every form
That Nature may on everything bestow
The day of birth brings everlasting woe.”

The Indian seems never to be struck by what to us seems (perhaps in error, but I hope not) the inconscient joy of creatures, nor yet that of children. He is constantly sure that all creation groaneth and travaileth. Nothing is young in Asia, all is very old. Every one is tired. In our minds thoughtless joy is connected with innocency, and in these Indian creeds there is no innocency as there is no effortless All-Good. Perfection is the result of labour. No other religious teacher spoke of little children as Christ did—Christ, whose incomprehensible followers were one day to consign the larger part of them, as a favour, “to the easiest room in hell.” Ardently as children are desired and lovingly as they are treated in the East, something essential to the charm of childhood eludes the Oriental perception of it.

In the sacred books of those Indian communities which concern themselves most about animals, they are very rarely shown in an attractive light. The horse, almost alone, is spoken of with genuine admiration; for instance, there is this simile: “As the trained Kambôga steed whom no noise frightens, exceeds all other horses in speed, so a very learned monk is superior to all others.” An elephant is extolled for having knelt down before a holy recluse though only newly tamed, and we hear that Mahavira’s words were understood by all animals. Folk-lore tells much that scriptures do not tell, and if we had a collection of Jaina folk-lore we should find, no doubt, records of charming friendships between beasts and saints, but in the Jaina sacred books pity, not love, is the feeling shown towards animals.

BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT.
India Museum.]

As a rule, Indian philosophical writers shirk the question of how far the soul which was and may be again a man’s retains its consciousness during its residence in lower forms. Probably the answer, were it given, would be: “Not very far,” but the higher animals are credited with a fuller share of reflection than in the West. Hence it is preferable to assume the shape of one of the higher than of one of the lower organisms, but still it is far better to be re-born as the lowest of men than as the highest of animals.

If it is something to be re-born as a man at all, it is a great deal to be re-born as a fortunate man, healthy, wealthy, and surrounded by troops of friends: at least, to the simple-minded such a prospect must appear to hold out a very splendid hope. It is remarkable what good care the framers of the intensely ascetic Jaina faith took of people who could not pretend to walk in the path of the elect. The mere “householder” (so called to distinguish him from the more admirable “Houseless”) has the promise of an ample recompense if he is only truthful, and humane, and liberal in alms-giving and temple-building. He may win very great promotion on earth or even a place in the Jaina heaven, the abode of light, where happy beings live long and enjoy great power and energy, and never grow old. Such a state agrees with the logical evolution of a virtuous but still this-worldly man. Could he aspire sincerely to a more spiritual state, and can the soul outsoar its own aspirations? The Jaina heaven is not eternal, but does every one wish for eternity? Most people wish for ten or fifteen years of tolerable freedom from care on this side of the grave. If they knew for certain that they were going to enjoy one thousand years of heaven, they would not think much of what would happen at the end of that time.

There remain the pure and separated spirits who in this present life have climbed beyond the plane of mortality. They are in the world, not of it, and they, indeed, “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch.” For these, the Jaina, like the Buddhist, keeps Nirvana.

The extreme reticence of Buddha and even of Buddhist commentators on the inner significance of this word—meaning literally “liberation”—is not observed by the Jainas, though it must not be inferred that there was any doctrinal difference of it in the view taken by the two sects. The Jainas show a great anxiety to tell what Nirvana is; if they fail it is because it baffles all description. They repudiate the idea that it signified annihilation, but admit that the subject oversteps the bounds of the thinkable. “The liberated soul perceives and knows, but there is no analogy by which to describe it—without body, re-birth, sex, dimensions.” We think of the wonderful lines in the _Helena_ of Euripides:—

“... the mind
Of the dead lives not, but immortal sense
When to immortal ether gone, possesses;”

lines which, like not a few others in Euripides, seem to reflect a light not cast from Grecian skies.

Like every stage in the history of the life-soul (_giva_) Nirvana is governed by an immutable law of evolution. When all the dross is eliminated only pure spirit is left: a distilled essence not only indestructible, for spirit is always indestructible, but also changeless. All the rest dies, which means that it changes, that it is re-born: this part can die no more, and hence can be born no more. It has gained the liberty of which the soul goes seeking in the Dantesque sense. It has gained safety, rest, peace.

How familiar the words sound! Here am I in Asia, and I could dream myself back under the roof of the village church where generations of simple folk had sought a rest-cure for their minds: where I, too, first listened to those words _safety_, _rest_, _peace_, with the strange home-sickness they awaken in young children or in the very old who have preserved their childhood’s faith. There are words that, by collecting round them inarticulate longings and indefinite associations, finally leave the order of language and enter that of music; they evoke an emotion, not an idea. The emotions which sway the human heart are few, and they are very much alike. The self-same word-music transports the English child to the happy land, far, far away, and the Indian mystic to Nirvana.

Almost everything which the Jainas say of Nirvana might have been said by any follower of any spiritual religion who attempted to suggest a place of final beatitude. “There is a safe place in view of all, but hard to approach, where there is no old age, nor death, nor pain, nor disease. This place which is in view of all is called Nirvana or freedom from pain, or it is called perfection; it is the safe, happy, quiet place. It is the eternal haven which is in view of all, but is difficult to approach.”

Nirvana is the getting-well of the soul. “He will put away all the misery which always afflicts mankind; as it were, _recovered from a long illness_, he becomes infinitely happy and obtains the final aim.”

We are told that the Buddhas that were and the Buddhas that will be, have peace for their foundation, even as all things have the earth for their foundation. (The term Buddha, or “Enlightened,” is used by Jainas as well as by Buddhists for super-excellent beings.)

Nirvana may or rather must be possessed before the death of the visible body: it must be obtained by the living if it is to be enjoyed by the dead. Detachment from the world, self-denial, selflessness, help the soul on its way, but the two moral qualities which are absolutely essential are kindness and veracity. Ruth and truth are written over the portals of eternity. “He should cease to injure living things whether they move or not, on high, below or on earth, for this has been called Nirvana, which consists in peace.” “A sage setting out for Nirvana should not speak untruth: this rule comprises Nirvana and the whole of carefulness.”

If a novice does anything wrong, he should never deny it: if he has not done it he should say, “I have not done it.” A lie must never be told—“not even in jest or in anger.” Were there nothing else of good in Jaina discipline this devotion to truth would place it high on mankind’s mountain.

_Photo in_ _India Museum._
COLOSSAL RECLINING BULL
(_Southern India._)]

The law of _Ahimsa_, “non-killing,” which stands at the head of the precepts of both Buddhist and Jaina, is not only far more rigidly observed by the Jaina, but also invested by him with a greater positive as well as relative value. One might say that with the Buddhists it is more a philosophic deduction, with the Jainas more a moral necessity. The position of Buddhists in this matter of _Ahimsa_ is one of compromise. There never was a Buddhist who did not think cruelty to animals an abominable sin, there is no compromise on that point, but, in respect to animal food, the usual Buddhist layman is not really more strict than any very humane person in the West; he abjures sport, he will not kill animals himself, but he does not refuse to eat meat if it is set before him. The Buddhists declare that the Lord Buddha was prayed to forbid animal food absolutely, but he would not. It is argued that in the flesh itself, when the life is gone from it, there is nothing particularly sacred: therefore it is permissible to sustain life on it. Your servants may buy meat ready for sale in the market: it would be there just the same if you did not send to buy it, but you ought not to tell them to give an order for some sort of meat which is not on sale; still less should you incite people to snare or shoot wild animals for your table. The Buddhists of to-day say with the opponents to vegetarianism in Europe, that total abstention from the flesh of animals would lead to the disappearance of the chief part of them; though it might be answered that sheep would still be wanted for their wool, goats and cows for their milk, oxen for ploughing. But a harder question is, What would happen to these animals when they grew old? The Jainas seek to settle this crux by building hospitals for them, but the result has been indifferently encouraging.

In Siam even monks are allowed animal food within certain limits, but as a rule what I have said of the Buddhist view of _Ahimsa_ does not apply to the religious, who leans to the strictest Jaina principle of having nothing to do with shedding blood on any pretence. The Buddhist monks in China teach the virtue of “fang sheng” (“life-saving”) by object-lessons in the shape of tanks built near the convents to which people bring tortoises, fishes and snakes to save them from death, and the monks also keep homes for starving or lost animals. Favoured European visitors are invited to witness the custom of feeding the wild birds before the morning meal is served: the brothers sit silently at the refectory-table with their bowls of rice and vegetables in front of them, but none begins to eat till one brother rises, after a sort of grace has been said, and goes to the door with a little rice in his hands which he places on a low stone pillar. All the birds are waiting on the roofs and fly down delighted to partake of their breakfast.

Fra Odoric, the Venetian Franciscan who dictated an account of his travels in 1330, describes a convent scene which was shown to him as a most interesting thing, so that when he went home he might say that he had seen “this strange sight or novelty.” To win the consent of the monks his native friend, who acted as cicerone, informed them that this Raban Francus, this religious “Frenchman” (Europeans were all “Frenchmen”) was going to the city of Cambaleth to pray for the life of the great Can. Thus recommended he was admitted, and the “religious man” with whom they had spoken “took two great basketsful of broken relics which remained on the table and led me into a little walled park, the door whereof he unlocked with his key, and there appeared unto us a pleasant fair green plot, into the which we entered. In the said green stands a little mount in form of a steeple, replenished with fragrant herbs and fine shady trees. And while we stood there, he took a cymbal or bell and rang therewith, as they use to ring to dinner or bevoir in cloisters, at the sound thereof many creatures of divers kinds came down from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, some like monkeys, and some having faces like men. And while I stood beholding of them, they gathered themselves together about him, to the number of 4,200 of these creatures, putting themselves in good order, before whom he set a platter and gave them the said fragments to eat. And when they had eaten he rang upon his cymbal a second time and they all returned to their former places. Then, wondering greatly at the matter, I demanded what kind of creatures those might be. They are (quoth he) the souls of noble men which we do here feed for the love of God who governeth the world, and as a man was honourable or noble in this life, so his soul after death entereth the body of some excellent beast or other, but the souls of simple and rustical people do possess the bodies of more vile and brutish creatures.”

Odoric’s informant was in error if he really said that distinctions of rank influenced the soul’s destiny, as this is no Buddhist doctrine. The charming description of the “strange sight or novelty” was imitated by Mandeville, who adds, with a sympathetic tolerance which is very characteristic of him, that the monks were “good religious men after their faith and law.”

That the stricter was also the more primitive Buddhist rule seems probable, and it may be that Buddha’s alleged defence of meat-eating was an invention meant to cover later latitudinarianism. Nevertheless, _Ahimsa_ was, from the first, a more integral part of the Jaina religion than of the Buddhist. The true keynote of either faith can be detected in their respective conversion stories. In all outbursts of religious revivalism (of which nature both Buddhism and Jainism largely partook) the moment of conversion is the hinge on which everything turns.

In the Buddhist story, a young prince, born on the steps of the throne, nursed in luxury and happily wedded, sees consecutively a broken-down old man, a man with a deadly disease, and a decomposing corpse. These dreadful and common realities were brought home to his mind with intolerable force. We seem to hear the despairing cry of R. L. Stevenson: “Who would find heart to begin to live if he dallied with the consideration of death”? We live because we drug ourselves with the waters of a new Lethe which make us forget future as well as past. Sakya Muni could not forget what he had seen or the lesson which it taught: the rest of his life was devoted to freeing himself and others from being endlessly subject to a like doom.

Now let us recall the Jaina conversion story. The son of a powerful king was on his way to marry a beautiful princess. At a certain place he saw a great many animals in cages and enclosures looking frightened and miserable. He asked his charioteer why all those animals which desired to be free and happy were penned up in cages and enclosures? The charioteer replied that they were not to be pitied, they were “lucky animals” which were to furnish a feast for a great multitude at His Highness’s wedding. (This is the very thing that an English poor man would have said.) Full of compassion, the future “saviour of the world” reflected: “If for my sake all these living creatures are killed, how shall I obtain happiness in another world?” Then and there he renounces the pomps and vanities of human existence, and he means it, too. The poor little bride, forsaken in this life, and not much comforted by promised compensation in the next, “not knowing what she could do,” cuts off her pretty hair and goes to a nunnery. In time she becomes a model of perfection, and many of her kindred and servants are persuaded by her to join the order.

In this story the revulsion is caused by pity, not by loathing. The instant he sees these poor animals, the kind-hearted prince feels sorry for them; then comes that unlucky word “lucky” which to the man of ignorance seems to be so particularly appropriate; it jars on Mahavira’s nerves as it would on the nerves of any sensitive or refined person. Nothing moves men to tears or laughter so surely as the antithetical shock of the incongruous. A rush of emotion overpowers Mahavira: he will not be happy at the cost of so much misery; he would become odious in his own sight. So he renounces all for the eternity of one moment of self-approving joy.

The Jainas carefully exclude every excuse for taking animal life: none is valid. Animals must not be killed for offering up in sacrifice, not for their skin, flesh, tail feathers, brush, horns, tusks, sinews, bones. They must not be killed with a purpose or without a purpose. If we have been wounded by them, or fear to be wounded by them, or if they eat our flesh or drink our blood, still we should not only bear it, but also feel no anger. “This is the quintessence of wisdom, not to kill anything whatever: know this to be the legitimate conclusion from the principle of reciprocity.”