The clauses here forbid the Niggantha to discuss topics relating to women, to contemplate the forms of women, to recall the pleasures and amusements he used to have with women, to eat and drink too highly seasoned viands, to lie near women.
The Fifth Vow: I renounce all attachments, whether little or much, small or great, living or lifeless; neither shall I myself form such attachments, nor cause others to do so, nor consent to their doing so (etc.).
The five clauses particularize the dangerous attachments formed by ears, eyes, smell, taste, touch.
It has been shown above (following Jacobi's telling comparison of the heretical vows with those of the early Brahman ascetic) that these vows are taken not from Buddhism but from Brahmanism. Jacobi opines that the Jains took the four first and that the reformer Mah[=a]v[=i]ra added the fifth as an offset to the Brahmanical vow of liberality.[30] The same writer shows that certain minor rules of the Jain sect are derived from the same Brahmanical source.
The main differences between the two Jain sects have been catalogued in an interesting sketch by Williams,[31] who mentions as the chief Jain stations of the north Delhi (where there is an annual gathering), Jeypur, and [=A]jm[=i]r. To these Mathur[=a] on the Jumna should be added.[32] The Çvet[=a]mbaras had forty-five or forty-six [=A]gamas, eleven or twelve Angas, twelve Up[=a]ngas, and other scriptures of the third or fourth century B.C., as they claim. They do not go naked (even their idols are clothed), and they admit women into the order. The Digambaras do not admit women, go naked, and have for sacred texts later works of the fifth century A.D. The latter of course assert that the scriptures of the former sect are spurious.[33]
In distinction from the Buddhists the Jains of to-day keep up caste. Some of them are Brahmans. They have, of course, a different prayer-formula, and have no St[=u]pas or D[=a]gobas (to hold relics); and, besides the metaphysical difference spoken of above, they differ from the Buddhists in assuming that metempsychosis does not stop at animal existence, but includes inanimate things (as these are regarded by others). According to one of their own sect of to-day, ahi[.m]s[=a] paramo dharmas, 'the highest law of duty is not to hurt a living creature.'[34]
The most striking absurdity of the Jain reverence for life has frequently been commented upon. Almost every city of western India, where they are found, has its beast-hospital, where animals are kept and fed. An amusing account of such an hospital, called Pi[=n]jra Pol, at Saurar[=a]shtra, Surat, is given in the first number of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.[35] Five thousand rats were supported in such a temple-hospital in Kutch.[36]
Of all the great religious sects of India that of N[=a]taputta is perhaps the least interesting, and has apparently the least excuse for being.[37] The Jains offered to the world but one great moral truth, withal a negative truth, 'not to harm,' nor was this verity invented by them. Indeed, what to the Jain is the great truth is only a grotesque exaggeration of what other sects recognized in a reasonable form. Of all the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid. They have no literature worthy of the name. They were not original enough to give up many orthodox features, so that they seem like a weakened rill of Brahmanism, cut off from the source, yet devoid of all independent character. A religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has indeed no right to exist; nor has it had as a system much influence on the history of thought. As in the case of Buddhism, the refined Jain metaphysics are probably a late growth. Historically these sectaries served a purpose as early protestants against ritualistic and polytheistic Brahmanism; but their real affinity with the latter faith is so great that at heart they soon became Brahmanic again. Their position geographically would make it seem probable that they, and not the Buddhists, had a hand in the making of the ethics of the later epic.
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