to the Mātā if her child recover or escape infection altogether.
Children. It is pitiful to see Jaina women who are childless going to Hindu temples and promising to offer cradles or money if only a little son may be born to them. They even promise that for three or four years the child shall be treated as a beggar, and no name given to him; all they ask is that their reproach may be taken away.
The orthodox Jaina declare that all these superstitions which their women folk have copied from the Hindus are contrary to their religion and indeed must even be accounted Mithyātva Śalya;[1] but they do not see that they are born of fear, and that they will only disappear when the timid ones begin to trust a personal God and learn that the All-Powerful is the All-Loving too.
- ↑ See pp. 130 ff.
