Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

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MAN AGAINST NATURE ing, but to avoid giving possible harm he should wear a veil before his mouth: this softens the impact of the air against the inside of the throat. And he must not snap his fingers or fan the wind; for that disturbs and causes damage. If wicked people on a ferryboat should for some reason throw a Jaina monk overboard, he must not try to make for shore with violent, flailing strokes, like a valiant swimmer, but should gently drift, like a log, and permit the currents to bring him gradually to land: he must not upset and injure the water-atoms. And he should then permit the moisture to drip or evaporate from his skin, never wipe it off or shake it away with a violent commotion of his limbs.
Non-violence (ahirsā) is thus carricd to an extreme. The Jaina sect survives as a sort of extremely fundamentalist vestige in a civilization that has gone through many changes since the remote age when this universal piety and universal science of the world of nature and of escape from it came into existence. Even Jaina lay folk must be watchful lest they cause unnecessary inconvenience to their fellow beings. They must, for example, not drink water after dark; for some small insect may be swallowed. They must not cat meat of any kind, or kill bugs that fly about and annoy; credit may be gained, indeed, by allowing the bugs to settle and have their fill. All of which has led to the following most bizarre popular custom, which may be observed even today in the metropolitan streets of Bombay.
Two men come along carrying between them a light cot or bed alive with bedbugs. They stop before the door of a Jaina household, and cry: "Who will feed the bugs? Who will feed the bugs?" If some devout lady tosses a coin from a window, one of the criers places himself carefully in the bed and offers himself as a living grazing ground to his fellow beings. Whereby the lady of the house gains the credit, and the hero of the cot the coin.
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