Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/105

 JWAHIR LOLL—SAHOOKAR. (134)

WAHIR, or Jowahir Loll, is of the same (Bunnmeah) profession or calling as Hotee Loll, but of the Surongee subdivision of the Jain caste. He is an inhabitant of Coel. By profession he is a banker, and he and his partner are also extensive landholders. This class of natives are usually moneyed men, cunning and unscrupulous. They employ themselves in the ordinary business of then calling; living in their homes, which they seldom quit (excepting when they go on a pilgrimage, or accompany a marriage procession), and year by year adding to their wealth, and extending then landed possessions. Their religion is Jain, and as they worship the god "Parusnath all Hindoos are intolerant towards them, it being pronounced by orthodox Hindoos contrary to their tenets to pass by the idol Parusnath, or see its temples built near their own. Like all Bunneahs, the Jains are a timid, peaceable race. They never use animal food, and hold it sinful to take life of any land. A peculiarity amongst them is that they never eat at night. They live to the age of sixty or seventy years. Jwahir Loll is thirty years old, five feet six inches in height. His complexion is dark, and eyes and hair black.

Although the Jains have in some respects admitted the tenets of the Hindoo (Brahmimcal) faith into then own system, rejecting its idolatry, &c., yet for the most part it is essentially different, and is, in fact, a dissent only from the ancient Buddhist religion. After the suppression of Buddhism by the resuscitated Brahminical power, about the second century before the Christian era, Jainism arose, and attained very considerable influence. Several great dynasties of Jain princes flourished—the Chalulkyas in Guzerat and the Deccan; the Kalabhuryas, Yadavas, Rattas, Kadumbas, and Hoi Salas, of Western India and Mysore—from the second century before Christ, till the Mahomedan invasion of the south of India under Alla-oo-deen, in 1310, when the whole were swept away, and never regained temporal authority. Both in Guzerat, the seat of their principal dominion, and in the western districts of India and Mysore, the Jains have left the