Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/297

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Jainas are the Budhists of India. They are followers of the religion, in a modified form, which now is believed in Ceylon, Siam, Burmah, Thibet, Tartary, and very extensively in China, Cochin-China, and Japan. It is, at the present day, one of the most extensively received religions in the world.

The Jainas of India maintain that theirs is the primitive and orthodox faith of Hindustan. Originally, they say, Brahminism was not the religion of India; but the Brahmins have left the practices of the ancients, having introduced false gods, superstitious forms, and abominable modes of worship. They reject the religious books of the Brahmins, the incarnations of the god Vishnu, and the worship of animals. This follows from their belief that God cannot become incarnate or take on him a fleshly body. As they hold it to be a sin to take life under any circumstances, they consider the sacrifice of animals, as of goats and fowls by the Hindus of other sects, to be an act of horrible impiety. Such sacrifices they view with abhorrence.

They believe that there is one Supreme Be-