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156
JAINISM AND KARNĀTAKA CULTURE be found in every creed; and that what is declared to have life in it should never be eaten.
"These and other false doctrines he made, perverting the scriptures and thereby plunged his soul in the first hell."'108
No less than eighty-four sub-sects of the Jainas are enumerated in the Marāthi-Jnāna-Kośa ;104 and the origin of each appears to have been due to reasons as trivial as those noted above: They differed as to whether a man should bathe in cold water or hot water, eat or not eat certain plants, worship standing or sitting, should decorate images or not, and whether the ascetics were to carry, if at all, a bundle of pea-cock feathers or a cow-tail whisk, etc., etc.105 Without going into these trivialities, therefore, we shall proceed to examine the more real causes of most of these divisions.
The Jainas of Dhärwār have a tradition which very well illustrates how they crystallised themselves into a separate caste owing to their strict observence of Ahimsa. They say that there was in ancient times a king named Ikśāvāku who had two family priests: one of them, Parvat by name, sacrificed sheep to the god of fire, and the other, called Nārad, used only parched rice for oblations. The descendants of the former, according to them, are the Brāhmaṇas, and those of the latter, the Jainas. They also hold that their community was once divided into Brāhmana, Ksatriya, Vaisya, and Sūdra, but that the Kșatriyas having disappeared long ago, only the other three now remain.106 This fourfold Aryan division of society is everywhere traceable among the Jainas of Karnāțaka and undoubtedly indicates the influence of Aryan ideas and institutions over the mass of Dravidian population. A decisive proof of this is found in South Kanara, where, only one section of the
103 Days'anasamgraha v. 12-15; cf, Peterson, op. cit. III, p. 24. 104 Marathi-InanaKos'a (37), p. 323, 105 For a detailed consideration of these see Glasenapp, Der Jai
pp, 355-57; Burgess, Digambara Iconography, pp. 2.3; Ind. Apt. VII
p. 28.
106
Cf. Dharwar Bom. Gaz. XXII, p. 116.
| SR No. | 011062 |
| Book Title | Jainism and Karnataka Culture |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | S R Sharma |
| Publisher | Karnataka Historical Research Society Dharwar |
| Publication Year | 1940 |
| Total Pages | 263 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 9 MB |