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THE MAKERS OF THE CROSSING he, but once in his lifetime, have had the opportunity of enjoying her. Simultaneously a dog that was there, seeing the corpse going into the fire, thought what dainty meals it would have made for him had they not determined to waste it in the flames. But a saint, also present, thought how regrettable that anyone endowed with such a body should have neglected to make use of it in difficult yoga exercises.
"There was but one corpse in that place," said Vipulamati, "and yet it produced threc sorts of feeling in three different witnesses. An external thing will thus liave its cffect according to the nature and purity of the mind. The mind," he concluded, "is purified by the conteinplation and worship of the Tīrthankaras. Images of the Tīrthaikaras make one fit, therefore, to enjoy the pleasures of heaven after death-and can even prepare one's mind to experience nirvāņa."
The Makers of the Crossing
JAINISM denies the authority of the Vedas and the orthodox traditions of Hinduism. Therefore it is reckoned as a heterodox Indian religion. It docs not derive from Brāhman-Aryan sources, but reflects the cosmology and anthropology of a much older, pre-Aryan upper class of northeastern India-being rooted in the same subsoil of archaic metaphysical speculation as Yoga, Sankhya, and Buddhism, the other non-Vedic Indian systems.84
84 Cf. supra, p. 60, Editor's note, and Appendix B. Yoga, Sankhya, and Ruddhism will be discussed infra, Chapters II and IV.
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