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.