Part 17

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.

Photo in India Museum. COLOSSAL RECLINING BULL (Southern India.)]

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!”

With extreme unanimity the three hundred and sixty-two drew back their hands as fast as they could. Then the speaker continued: “How is this, philosophers; what are you doing with your hands?” “They will be burnt,” said the others. “And what does it matter if they are burnt?” “But it would hurt us dreadfully.” “So you do not want to suffer pain?” Well, this is the case with all animals. This maxim applies to every creature, this principle, this religious reflection, holds good of all living things. Therefore those religious teachers who say that all sorts of living things may be beaten or ill-treated, or tormented, or deprived of life will, in time, suffer in the same way themselves, and have to undergo the whole round of the scale of earthly existence. They will be whirled round, put in irons, see their mothers, fathers, children die, have bad luck, poverty, the society of people they detest, separation from those they love, “they will again wander distraught in the beginningless and endless wilderness.”

Like a true orator the Jaina member of this early Congress of Religions, who has drifted from irony to fierce denunciation, does not leave his hearers with these visions of terror, but with the consoling promise to the merciful of everlasting beatitude.

WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS. Reliefs on two gold cups found at Vapheio. (From Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.)]

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LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH

THE Adi Granth, or sacred Book of the Sikhs of the Punjab, was composed by the founder of their religion and their nationality, Baba Nanak (b. 1469), who abolished caste and idolatry, and established a pure monotheism. A striking incident at the Coronation Durbar was the arrival of the Sikh mission in charge of the Adi Granth, which was brought on a pilgrimage from its shrine in the exquisitely beautiful golden temple at Amritsar to the tomb of the disciple of Nanak, who, before suffering martyrdom at Delhi during the Mogul Empire, prophesied the advent of a fair race destined to sweep the Mogul power to the winds. I take these few sentences to show the essential continuity of Indian thought about animals. In the faith of Nanak none remains of the particular tenets of Buddhism or Jainism or Hinduism, but the animal is still inside, not outside, the pale of what may be called Pan-humanity: the whole family of earth-born creatures.

Say not that this or that distasteful is, In all the dear Lord dwells,—they all are His

Grieve not the humblest heart; all hearts that are, Are priceless jewels, all are rubies rare.

Ah! If thou long’st for thy Beloved, restrain One angry word that gives thy brother pain.

II.

All creatures, Lord, are Thine, and Thou art theirs, One bond Creator with created shares;