They spread out their ordure, they inhale its smell, they
are shy to look at water;
They have their heads plucked like sheep; the pluckers’
hands are smeared with ashes—
They spoil the occupations of their parents; their families
weep and wail for them.
They give not their deceased relations lamps or perform
their last rites, or place anywhere barley rolls and leaves for them.[1]
The sixty-eight places of pilgrimage grant them no
access; the Brahmans will not eat their food.
They are ever filthy day and night; they have no sacrificial marks on their foreheads.
They ever sit close as if they were at a wake, and they
enter no assembly.
They hold cups in their hands; they have brooms[2] by
their sides; they walk in single file.
They are not Jogis, or Jangams, or Qazis, or Mullas.
God hath ruined them; they go about despised; their
words are like curses.
God killeth and restoreth animals to life; none else may
preserve them.
The Jains make not gifts or perform ablutions; dust
lighteth on their plucked heads.
From water gems arose when Meru was made the churning
staff.[3]
The gods appointed the sixty-eight places of pilgrimages, and holy days were fixed accordingly by their orders.
- ↑ The Jains conform in many ways to Hindu customs. The Guru here censures them for not being altogether consistent.
- ↑ To brush away insects and thus avoid treading on them.
- ↑ According to the Hindus, Vishnu in his Kurmavātar assumed the shape of a tortoise which supported the mountain Mandara—in the Sikh writings called Meru—the Olympus of the Hindus, with which the gods churned the ocean. From the ocean were produced the fourteen gems or jewels here referred to. They are Lakhsmi, wife of Vishnu, the moon, a white horse with seven heads, a holy physician, a prodigious elephant, the tree of plenty, the all-yielding cow. &c.
