According to the the vital principle is a real existence animating in distinct portions, dis tinct bodies, and condemned to suffer the con sequences of its actions by migration. The reality of elementary matter is also asserted, as well as of gods, demons, heaven, and hell. All existence is divisible into two heads,—Life (Jiva), or the living and sentient principle ; • and Inertia, or A jiva, the various modifications of inanimate matter. Though the forms and conditions of these may change; as they are created they arc Imperishable. With them Dharma is virtue, and .A dbarma, vice.. The Jain faith is supposed to be amongst the most recent of all the religions systems in India. Hema Chandra, one of their greatest writers, flourished in the end of the 12th century; and the compiler of the Jain Puranas of the Dekhan Is said to have written at the end of the 9th century, and the Ka1pa Sutra was not composed earlier than tho 12th or 13th century. The Jain religion never extended itself into Bengal or Hindustan as a state religion, for two princes of Benares professed Buddhism up to the 11th century. In Western Marwar, and all the territory subject to the Chalukya princes of Gujerat, the Jain faith became that of the ruling dynasty about 1174, and Jain relics and followers are still abundant in Marwar, Gujerat, and the northern part of the Malabar coast. The Jain faith was introduced on the Coromandel coast in the 8th or 9th century, in the reign of Amogh versha, king of Tonda Mandalam. Thus the 8th or 9th century seems to have been the earliest period of the existence of this religion there, and it was no doubt but an offshoot of the Buddhist faith, supposed by some to have been a branch of the Buddhists who escaped the fate of the orthodox followers of Gautama in the 8th and 9th cen turies, by conforming somewhat to Brahmanism, and even helping to persecute the Buddhists. Hence many of the Jains acknowledge Siva, and in Mysore and other Southern India they are even divided into castes.
In the reign of Himasitala, the Buddhist king of Conjeveram, about A.D. 800, the Jains and Buddhists entered on a Strife for supremacy, in which the Buddhists were defeated ; some were sentenced to be crushed to death in oil-mills, others fled to Ceylon. In the reign of Kuna Pandiyan of Madura, about the 10th century A.D., the Janis were in their turn overcome by the Saivas, headed by The Triuviliadal Puranam states that 8000 learned Jainas, rather than recant, with Obstinate prejudice put them selves on the impaling stakes.' The Jain are at present divided into the Digam bara or Skyclad, i.e. naked, and Swetambara, i.e. the white-robed. The Digambara are also called, Nirgrantha, without a bound, also Nangnatha, naked mendicants. They seem to have the greater claim to antiquity. All of the sect in the Dekhan and in Western India appear to be Digambara Jain. Indeed, the term Jain seems a new appella tion, for in the early philosophical writings of the Hindus they are styled Digambara or Nanga, but in the present day the Digambara do not go naked except at meal time, but wear coloured garments. The Digambara assort that the women
never, attain Nirvan, but the Swetambara admit the gentler sex to final annihilation.
There are clerical as well as lay Jains, the Yati or Jati, and the Sravaka, the former of whom lead a religious life, and subsist on the alms which the latter supply. The Yati are sometimes collected in mat'hs, called by them Pasala, and even whenabroad in tho world they acknowledge a sort of obedience to the• head of the Pasala of which they were once members. The Yati never °Mate as priests in the temples, the ceremonies being conducted by a member of the orthodox priesthood, a Brahman duly trained for the purpose. They carry a brush to sweep the ground before they tread upon it, never eat nor drink in the dark, lest they should inadvertently swallow an insect, and sometimes wear a thin cloth over their mouths, lest their breath should inhale some of the atomic ephemera that frolic in the sunbeams. They wear their hair cut short, or plucked out from the roots. They profess con tinence and poverty, and pretend to observe frequent fasts, and exercise profound abstraction. Some of them are engaged in traffic, and others are proprietors of mat'hs and temples, and derive a comfortable support from the offerings pre sented by the secular votaries of Jina. The Jains of the south of India are divided into castes, but in Northern India they are of one caste, refuse to mix with Hindus, and recognise eighty-four orders amongst themselves, between whom no inter marriages have taken place. This classification is called the Gacheha or Got, the family or race, which has been substituted for the Varna, the Jati, or caste. Secular Jains follow the usual professions of Hindus, but collect chiefly in towns, where, as merchants and bankers, they usually form a very opulent portion of the com munity. There are many in Murshidabad, Benarcs, and the Doab, but they are most numerous in Mewar and Marwar ; numerous in Gujerat, Mysore, and in the upper part of the Malabar coast, and scattered throughout the Peninsula. They form a large division of the population of India, and, from their wealth and influence, a most important one. More than half of the mercantile wealth of India passes through the hands of the Jain laity. The chief magistrate and assessors of justice in Udaipur, and most of the towns of Rajasthan, were of this sect ; and as their duties were confined to civil cases, they are as com petent in these as they are the reverse in criminal cases, from their tenets forbidding the shedding of blood. To this leading feature in their religion they owe their political debasement ; for Komar pal, king of Anhilwara of the Jain faith, would not march his armies in the rains, from the unavoidable sacrifice of animal life that must have ensued. The strict Jain does not even maintain a lamp during that season, lest it should attract moths to their destruction.