5. Strict rules against taking life.
The moral precepts of the Jains are of the same type as those of Buddhism and Vaishnavite Hinduism, but of an excessive rigidity, at any rate in the case of the Yatis or Jatis, the ascetics. They promise not to hurt, not to speak untruths, to appropriate nothing to themselves without permission, to preserve chastity and to practise self-sacrifice. But these simple rules are extraordinarily expanded on the part of the Jains. Thus, concerning the oath not to hurt, on which the Jains lay most emphasis: it prohibits not only the intentional killing or injuring of living beings, plants or the souls existing in dead matter, but requires also the utmost carefulness in the whole manner of life, and a watchfulness also over all movements and functions of the body by which anything living might be hurt. It demands, finally, strict watch over the heart and tongue, and the avoidance of all thoughts and words which might lead to disputes and quarrels, and thereby do harm. In like manner the rule of sacrifice requires not only that the ascetic should have no houses or possessions, but he must also acquire a complete unconcern towards agreeable or disagreeable impressions, and destroy all feelings of attachment to anything living or dead.[8] Similarly, death by voluntary starvation is prescribed for those ascetics who have reached the Kewalin or brightest stage of knowledge, as the means of entering their heaven. Owing to the late date of the Jain scriptures, any or all of its doctrines may have been adopted from Buddhism between the commencement of the two religions and the time when they were compiled. The Jains did not definitely abolish caste, and hence escaped the persecution to which Buddhism was subjected during the period of its decline from the fifth or sixth century A.D. On account of this trouble many Buddhists became Jains, and hence a further fusion of the doctrines of the rival sects may have ensued. The Digambara sect of Jains agree with the Buddhists in holding that women cannot attain Nirvāna or heaven, while the Swetambara sect say that they can, and also admit women as nuns into the ascetic order. The Jain scripture, the Yogashāstra, speaks of women as the lamps that burn on the road that leads to the gates of hell.