the Bhagavadgītā, which is widely read amongst them, or of the stories they have read of Jesus Christ, for whose person the Jaina, with their eager love of all that is tender and beautiful, have a great reverence. Nevertheless, according to their creed, they do not believe in a Creator, much less in a Father Omnipotent, to whom they might feel such personal devotion. The state of godhood is what they fix their thoughts on, a state of passive and passionless beatitude enjoyed by several separate Siddha; and for this state of godhood they are permitted to have an attachment, and it is on their own attainment of this state that they fix their hopes and their ambitions. 'Why should I love a personal god?' a Jaina once said to the writer, 'I hope to become a god myself'. And in one of their sacred books the whole matter is summed up in words terrible in their loneliness: 'Man! Thou art thine own friend; why wishest thou for a friend beyond thyself?'[1]
xi. Dveṣa.The eleventh kind of sin, hatred or envy (Dveṣa or Īrṣyā), is entirely evil, and the soul that would proceed on the great journey must completely free itself from it. As it often springs from possession, the man who strips himself of all property goes far to rid himself of the sin too, as the following legend shows.
There was once a king named Draviḍa, who on his death divided his property between his elder son, Drāviḍa, and his younger, Vārikhilla, leaving the senior more property than the junior. The younger, however, succeeded by wise management in so increasing his estate that his elder brother grew more and more envious, and finally on some pretext or other a war broke out between the two. During the monsoon there was perforce a truce, and Drāviḍa had leisure to hear a famous non-Jaina ascetic preach on the sin of envy; becoming converted, he went off to the camp of his younger brother to beg forgiveness. The brothers were completely reconciled, and both of them not only
- ↑ Āċārāṅga Sūtra, S. B. E., xxii, p. 33.
