9. Rules and customs of the laity.
The Jain laity are known as Shrāwak or Saraogi, learners. There is comparatively little to distinguish them from their Hindu brethren. Their principal tenet is to avoid the destruction of all animal, including insect life, but the Hindu Banias are practically all Vaishnavas, and observe almost the same tenderness for animal life as the Jains. The Jains are distinguished by their separate temples and method of worship, and they do not recognise the authority of the Vedas nor revere the lingam of Siva. Consequently they do not use the Hindu sacred texts at their weddings, but repeat some verses from their own scriptures. These weddings are said to be more in the nature of a civil contract than of a religious ceremony. The bride and bridegroom walk seven times round the sacred post and are then seated on a platform and promise to observe certain rules of conduct towards each other and avoid offences. It is said that formerly a Jain bride was locked up in a temple for the first night and considered to be the bride of the god. But as scandals arose from this custom, she is now only locked up for a minute or two and then let out again. Jain boys are invested with the sacred thread on the occasion of their weddings or at twenty-one or twenty-two if they are still unmarried at that age. The thread is renewed annually on the day before the full moon of Bhādon (August), after a ten days’ fast in honour of Anānt Nāth Tirthakār. The thread is made by the Jain priests of tree cotton and has three knots. At their funerals the Jains do not shave the moustaches off as a rule, and they never shave the choti or scalp-lock, which they wear like Hindus. They give a feast to the caste-fellows and distribute money in charity, but do not perform the Hindu shrāddh or offering of sacrificial cakes to the dead. The Agarwāl and Khandelwāl Jains, however, invoke the spirits of their ancestors at weddings. Traces of an old hostility between Jains and Hindus survive in the Hindu saying that one should not take refuge in a Jain temple, even to escape from a mad elephant; and in the rule that a Jain beggar will not take alms from a Hindu unless he can perform some service in return, though it may not equal the value of the alms.