sâra,--the revolution of birth and death. The means of reaching it are to it, as to Buddhism, the three Jewels--the right Faith, the right Knowledge, and the right Walk. By the right Faith it understands the full surrender of himself to the teacher, the Jina, the firm conviction that he alone has found the way of salvation, and only with him is protection and refuge to be found. Ask who Jina is, and the Jaina will give exactly the same answer as the Buddhist with respect to Buddha. He is originally an erring man, bound with the bonds of the world, who,--not by the help of a teacher, nor by the revelation of the Vedas--which, he declares, are corrupt--but by his own power, has attained to omniscience and freedom, and out of pity for suffering mankind preaches and declares the way of salvation, which he has found. Because he has conquered the world and the enemies in the human heart, he is called Jina "the Victor", Mahâvîra, "the great hero"; because he possesses the highest knowledge, he is called Sarvajña or Kevalin, the "omniscient", Buddha, the "enlightened"; because he has freed himself from the world he receives the names of Mukta "the delivered one", Siddha and Tathâgata, "the perfected", Arhat "the holy one"; and as the proclaimer of the doctrine, he is the Tîrthakara "the finder of the ford", through the ocean of the Sam[postvocalic]
sâra. In these epithets, applied to the founder of their doctrine, the Jainas agree almost entirely with the Buddhists, as the likeness of his character to that of Buddha would lead us to expect. They prefer, however, to use the names Jina and Arhat, while the Buddhists prefer to speak of Buddha as Tathâgata or Sugata. The title Tîrthakara is peculiar to the Jainas. Among the Buddhists it is a designation for false teachers. [[6]]
The Jaina says further, however, that there was more than one Jina. Four and twenty have, at long intervals, appeared and have again and again restored to their original purity the doctrines darkened by evil influences. They all spring from noble, warlike tribes. Only in such, not among the low Brâhmans, can a Jina see the light of the world. The first Jina R
ıshabha,--more than 100 billion oceans of years ago,--periods of unimaginable length, [[7]] --was born as the son of a king of Ayodhyâ and lived eight million four hundred thousand years. The intervals between his successors and the durations of their lives became shorter and shorter. Between the twenty third, Pârśva and the twenty fourth Vardhamâna, were only 250 years, and the age of the latter is given as only seventy-two years. He appeared, according to some, in the last half of the sixth century, according to others in the first half of the fifth century B.C. He is of course the true, historical prophet of the Jainas and it is in his doctrine, that the Jainas should believe. The dating back of the origin of the Jaina religion again, agrees with the pretensions of the Buddhists, who recognise twenty-five Buddhas who taught the same system one after the other. Even with Brahmanism, it seems to be in some distant manner connected, for the latter teaches in its cosmogony, the successive appearance of Demiurges, and wise men--the fourteen Manus, who, at various periods helped to complete the work of creation and proclaimed the Brahmanical law. These Brahmanical ideas may possibly have given rise to the doctrines of the twenty-five Buddhas and twenty-four Jinas, [[8]] which, certainly, are later additions in both systems.
The undoubted and absolutely correct comprehension of the nine truths which the Jina gives expression to, or of the philosophical system which the Jina taught, represents the second Jewel--the true Knowledge. Its principal features are shortly as follows. [[9]]
The world (by which we are to understand, not only the visible, but also imaginary continents depicted with the most extravagant fancy, heavens and hells of the Brahmanical Cosmology, extended by new discoveries) is uncreated. It exists, without ruler, only by the power of its elements, and is everlasting. The elements of the world are six substances--souls, Dharma or moral merit, Adharma or sin, space, time, particles of matter. From the union of the latter spring four elements--earth, fire, water, wind--and further, bodies and all other appearances of the world of sense and of the supernatural worlds. The forms of the appearances are mostly unchangeable. Only the bodies of men and their age increase or decrease in consequence of the greater or less influence of sin or merit, during immeasurably long periods,--the Avasarpin
i and the Utsarpin
i. Souls are, each by itself, independent, real existences whose foundation is pure intelligence, and who possess an impulse to action. In the world they are always chained to bodies. The reason of this confinement is that they give themselves up to the stress of activity, to passions, to influences of the senses and objects of the mind, or attach themselves to a false belief. The deeds which they perform in the bodies are Karman, merit and sin. This drives them--when one body has passed away, according to the conditions of its existence--into another, whose quality depends on the character of the Karman, and will be determined especially by the last thoughts springing from it before death. Virtue leads to the heavens of the gods or to birth among men in pure and noble races. Sin consigns the souls to the lower regions, in the bodies of animals, in plants, even into masses of lifeless matter. For--according to the Jaina doctrine--souls exist not only in organic structures, but also in apparently dead masses, in stones, in lumps of earth, in drops of water, in fire and in wind. Through union with bodies the nature of the soul is affected. In the mass of matter the light of its intelligence is completely concealed; it loses consciousness, is immovable, and large or small, according to the dimensions of its abode. In organic structures it is always conscious; it depends however, on the nature of the same, whether it is movable or immovable and possessed of five, four, three, two, or one organ of sense.
The bondage of souls, if they inhabit a human body, can be abolished by the suppression of the causes which lead to their confinement and by the destruction of the Karman. The suppression of the causes is accomplished by overcoming the inclination to be active and the passions, by the control of the senses, and by steadfastly holding to the right faith. In this way will be hindered the addition of new Karman, new merit or new guilt. The destruction of Karman remaining from previous existences can be brought about either spontaneously by the exhaustion of the supply or by asceticism. In the latter case the final state is the attainment to a knowledge which penetrates the universe, to Kevala, Jñâna and Nirvân
a or Moksha: full deliverance from all bonds. These goals may be reached even while the soul is still in its body. If however the body is destroyed then the soul wanders into the "No-World" (alôka) as the Jain says, i.e. into the heaven of Jina 'the delivered', lying outside the world. [[10]] There it continues eternally in its pure intellectual nature. Its condition is that of perfect rest which nothing disturbs. These fundamental ideas are carried out in the particulars with a subtilness and fantasy unexampled, even in subtile and fantastic India, in a scholarly style, and defended by the syâdvâda--the doctrine of "It may be so",--a mode of reasoning which makes it possible to assert and deny the existence of one and the same thing. If this be compared with the other Indian systems, it stands nearer the Brâhman than the Buddhist, with which it has the acceptance in common of only four, not five elements. Jainism touches all the Brâhman religions and Buddhism in its cosmology and ideas of periods, and it agrees entirely with regard to the doctrines of Karman, of the bondage, and the deliverance of souls. Atheism, the view that the world was not created, is common to it with Buddhism and the Sâm[postvocalic]