Part 13

As the Jaina scriptures are in effect a manual of discipline for monks, it is natural that they should be severe on womankind. Not that a woman’s soul is worth less than a man’s or, rather, since spirit is sexless, the distinction does not exist. A woman may be as good a saint as a man; a nun may be as meritorious as a monk. The identity of mysticism independent of creed was never more apparent than in the beautiful saying of a Jaina nun: “As a bird dislikes the cage, so do I dislike the world,” which might have been uttered by any of the self-consumed spirits of the Latin Church from St. Teresa downwards. I have never come across an allusion to being born again as a woman as a punishment. But though the fullest potentiality of merit is allowed to woman in the abstract, the Eternal Feminine is looked upon in the concrete as man’s worst snare. “Women are the greatest temptation in the world.” The Jaina books are Counsels of Perfection and not a Decalogue framed for common humanity: they give one the idea of being intended for preternaturally good people, and never more so than in the manner in which they treat the dreadful snares and temptations for which women are answerable: instead of a Venusberg, we are shown—the domestic hearth! The story in question might be called “The Woes of the Model Husband!” A girl who vowed that she would do anything rather than be parted from the dear object of her affections, has no sooner settled the matter once for all by marriage than she begins to scold and trample on the poor man’s head. Her spouse is sent on a thousand errands, not one moment can he call his own. Countless are the lady’s wants and her commands keep pace with them: “Do look for the bodkin; go and get some fruit; bring wood to cook the vegetables; why don’t you come and rub my back instead of standing there doing nothing? Are my clothes all right? Where is the scent-bottle? I want the hair-dresser. Where is my basket to put my things in? And my trinkets? There, I want my shoes and my umbrella. Bring me my comb and the ribbon to tie up my hair. Get the looking-glass and a tooth-brush. I must have a needle and thread. You really ought to look after the stores, the rainy season will be here in no time.” These and many more are the young wife’s behests, the appalling list of which might well intimidate those about to marry, but there is worse to come. When “the joy of their lives, the crown of their wedded bliss” arrives in the shape of a baby, it is the unfortunate husband who is set to mind it: he has to get up in the night to sing lullabies to it “just as if he were a nurserymaid,” and ashamed though he is of such a humiliation, he is actually put to wash the baby-linen! “All this has been done by many men who for the sake of pleasure have stooped so low; they become the equals of slaves, animals, beasts of burden, _mere nobodies_.” Would not most readers take this for a quotation from one of Ibsen’s plays rather than from a sacred volume which was composed a considerable time before the beginning of our era?

The Indian pessimist is withheld from suicide by the dread of a worse existence beyond the pyre. He is the coward of conscience to a much greater extent than the weary Occidental, because his sense of the unseen is so much stronger. In the Jaina system, however, suicide is permitted under certain circumstances. After twelve years of rigorous penance a man is allowed the supreme favour of “a religious death”—in other words, he may commit suicide by starvation. This is called Itvara. The civilised Indian does not seem to have the power of dying when he pleases without the assistance of starvation which is possessed by some of the higher savage races.

The soul may be re-born in any earthly form from the lowest to the highest, but there are other possibilities before it when it leaves its mortal coil. Those who are very bad, too bad to disgrace the earth again—above all, the cruel—are consigned to an _Inferno_ more awful than Dante’s, though not without points of striking resemblance to it. The very good who abounded in charity and in truth, but who yet lived in the world the life of the world, become gods, glorified beings enjoying a great measure of happiness and power, but not eternal. Far beyond the joys of this heaven, which are still thinkable, is the unthinkable bliss of the Perfect, of the Conquerors, of the Changeless. The human mind could not adjust the idea of evolution more scientifically to the soul’s destiny.

It is unnecessary to say that the number who become even gods is very small. A great deal is achieved if a man is simply born again as a man, for though Jaina and Buddhist thinks that man’s lot is wretched (or, at least that it ought to be when we consider its inherent evils), yet it must be distinctly remembered that he thinks the life of beasts far more wretched. Leopardi’s “Song of the Nomadic Shepherd in Asia,” in which he makes the world-weary shepherd envy the fate of his sheep, is steeped in Western not in Eastern pessimism: only in the last lines, which really contradict the rest, we find the true Eastern note:—

“Perchance in every form That Nature may on everything bestow The day of birth brings everlasting woe.”

The Indian seems never to be struck by what to us seems (perhaps in error, but I hope not) the inconscient joy of creatures, nor yet that of children. He is constantly sure that all creation groaneth and travaileth. Nothing is young in Asia, all is very old. Every one is tired. In our minds thoughtless joy is connected with innocency, and in these Indian creeds there is no innocency as there is no effortless All-Good. Perfection is the result of labour. No other religious teacher spoke of little children as Christ did—Christ, whose incomprehensible followers were one day to consign the larger part of them, as a favour, “to the easiest room in hell.” Ardently as children are desired and lovingly as they are treated in the East, something essential to the charm of childhood eludes the Oriental perception of it.

In the sacred books of those Indian communities which concern themselves most about animals, they are very rarely shown in an attractive light. The horse, almost alone, is spoken of with genuine admiration; for instance, there is this simile: “As the trained Kambôga steed whom no noise frightens, exceeds all other horses in speed, so a very learned monk is superior to all others.” An elephant is extolled for having knelt down before a holy recluse though only newly tamed, and we hear that Mahavira’s words were understood by all animals. Folk-lore tells much that scriptures do not tell, and if we had a collection of Jaina folk-lore we should find, no doubt, records of charming friendships between beasts and saints, but in the Jaina sacred books pity, not love, is the feeling shown towards animals.

As a rule, Indian philosophical writers shirk the question of how far the soul which was and may be again a man’s retains its consciousness during its residence in lower forms. Probably the answer, were it given, would be: “Not very far,” but the higher animals are credited with a fuller share of reflection than in the West. Hence it is preferable to assume the shape of one of the higher than of one of the lower organisms, but still it is far better to be re-born as the lowest of men than as the highest of animals.

If it is something to be re-born as a man at all, it is a great deal to be re-born as a fortunate man, healthy, wealthy, and surrounded by troops of friends: at least, to the simple-minded such a prospect must appear to hold out a very splendid hope. It is remarkable what good care the framers of the intensely ascetic Jaina faith took of people who could not pretend to walk in the path of the elect. The mere “householder” (so called to distinguish him from the more admirable “Houseless”) has the promise of an ample recompense if he is only truthful, and humane, and liberal in alms-giving and temple-building. He may win very great promotion on earth or even a place in the Jaina heaven, the abode of light, where happy beings live long and enjoy great power and energy, and never grow old. Such a state agrees with the logical evolution of a virtuous but still this-worldly man. Could he aspire sincerely to a more spiritual state, and can the soul outsoar its own aspirations? The Jaina heaven is not eternal, but does every one wish for eternity? Most people wish for ten or fifteen years of tolerable freedom from care on this side of the grave. If they knew for certain that they were going to enjoy one thousand years of heaven, they would not think much of what would happen at the end of that time.

There remain the pure and separated spirits who in this present life have climbed beyond the plane of mortality. They are in the world, not of it, and they, indeed, “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch.” For these, the Jaina, like the Buddhist, keeps Nirvana.

The extreme reticence of Buddha and even of Buddhist commentators on the inner significance of this word—meaning literally “liberation”—is not observed by the Jainas, though it must not be inferred that there was any doctrinal difference of it in the view taken by the two sects. The Jainas show a great anxiety to tell what Nirvana is; if they fail it is because it baffles all description. They repudiate the idea that it signified annihilation, but admit that the subject oversteps the bounds of the thinkable. “The liberated soul perceives and knows, but there is no analogy by which to describe it—without body, re-birth, sex, dimensions.” We think of the wonderful lines in the _Helena_ of Euripides:—

“... the mind Of the dead lives not, but immortal sense When to immortal ether gone, possesses;”

lines which, like not a few others in Euripides, seem to reflect a light not cast from Grecian skies.

Like every stage in the history of the life-soul (_giva_) Nirvana is governed by an immutable law of evolution. When all the dross is eliminated only pure spirit is left: a distilled essence not only indestructible, for spirit is always indestructible, but also changeless. All the rest dies, which means that it changes, that it is re-born: this part can die no more, and hence can be born no more. It has gained the liberty of which the soul goes seeking in the Dantesque sense. It has gained safety, rest, peace.

How familiar the words sound! Here am I in Asia, and I could dream myself back under the roof of the village church where generations of simple folk had sought a rest-cure for their minds: where I, too, first listened to those words _safety_, _rest_, _peace_, with the strange home-sickness they awaken in young children or in the very old who have preserved their childhood’s faith. There are words that, by collecting round them inarticulate longings and indefinite associations, finally leave the order of language and enter that of music; they evoke an emotion, not an idea. The emotions which sway the human heart are few, and they are very much alike. The self-same word-music transports the English child to the happy land, far, far away, and the Indian mystic to Nirvana.

Almost everything which the Jainas say of Nirvana might have been said by any follower of any spiritual religion who attempted to suggest a place of final beatitude. “There is a safe place in view of all, but hard to approach, where there is no old age, nor death, nor pain, nor disease. This place which is in view of all is called Nirvana or freedom from pain, or it is called perfection; it is the safe, happy, quiet place. It is the eternal haven which is in view of all, but is difficult to approach.”

Nirvana is the getting-well of the soul. “He will put away all the misery which always afflicts mankind; as it were, _recovered from a long illness_, he becomes infinitely happy and obtains the final aim.”

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.

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.

In the Buddhist story, a young prince, born on the steps of the throne, nursed in luxury and happily wedded, sees consecutively a broken-down old man, a man with a deadly disease, and a decomposing corpse. These dreadful and common realities were brought home to his mind with intolerable force. We seem to hear the despairing cry of R. L. Stevenson: “Who would find heart to begin to live if he dallied with the consideration of death”? We live because we drug ourselves with the waters of a new Lethe which make us forget future as well as past. Sakya Muni could not forget what he had seen or the lesson which it taught: the rest of his life was devoted to freeing himself and others from being endlessly subject to a like doom.

Now let us recall the Jaina conversion story. The son of a powerful king was on his way to marry a beautiful princess. At a certain place he saw a great many animals in cages and enclosures looking frightened and miserable. He asked his charioteer why all those animals which desired to be free and happy were penned up in cages and enclosures? The charioteer replied that they were not to be pitied, they were “lucky animals” which were to furnish a feast for a great multitude at His Highness’s wedding. (This is the very thing that an English poor man would have said.) Full of compassion, the future “saviour of the world” reflected: “If for my sake all these living creatures are killed, how shall I obtain happiness in another world?” Then and there he renounces the pomps and vanities of human existence, and he means it, too. The poor little bride, forsaken in this life, and not much comforted by promised compensation in the next, “not knowing what she could do,” cuts off her pretty hair and goes to a nunnery. In time she becomes a model of perfection, and many of her kindred and servants are persuaded by her to join the order.

In this story the revulsion is caused by pity, not by loathing. The instant he sees these poor animals, the kind-hearted prince feels sorry for them; then comes that unlucky word “lucky” which to the man of ignorance seems to be so particularly appropriate; it jars on Mahavira’s nerves as it would on the nerves of any sensitive or refined person. Nothing moves men to tears or laughter so surely as the antithetical shock of the incongruous. A rush of emotion overpowers Mahavira: he will not be happy at the cost of so much misery; he would become odious in his own sight. So he renounces all for the eternity of one moment of self-approving joy.

The Jainas carefully exclude every excuse for taking animal life: none is valid. Animals must not be killed for offering up in sacrifice, not for their skin, flesh, tail feathers, brush, horns, tusks, sinews, bones. They must not be killed with a purpose or without a purpose. If we have been wounded by them, or fear to be wounded by them, or if they eat our flesh or drink our blood, still we should not only bear it, but also feel no anger. “This is the quintessence of wisdom, not to kill anything whatever: know this to be the legitimate conclusion from the principle of reciprocity.”

No one denies that the principle of reciprocity is the basis of all morality, and by extending it from men to sentient things, the Jainas have safeguarded their doctrine of _Ahimsa_ with a stronger wall of defence than any built on the fantastic fear of devouring one’s ancestors. Nor can it be said of the Jainas that to a superstitious repugnance to taking life they join indifference to causing suffering: inflicting suffering is hardly distinguished from inflicting death. “All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.” “Indifferent to worldly objects, a man should wander about treating all the creatures in the world as he himself would be treated.”

Perhaps the most remarkable of Jaina stories is a real masterpiece of wit and wisdom in which this theory of reciprocity is enforced. For the whole of it I must refer the reader to Professor Jacobi’s translation; I can only give the leading points. Once upon a time three hundred and sixty-three philosophers, representing a similar number of philosophical schools, and differing in character, opinions, taste, undertakings and plans, stood round in a large circle, each one in his place. They discussed their various views, and at last one man took a vessel full of red-hot coals which he held at a distance from him with a pair of tongs. “Now, you philosophers,” said he, “just take this for a moment and hold it in your hands. No trickery, if you please; you are _not_ to hold it with the tongs or to put the fire out. Fair and honest!”