Month: April 2023

Kindness To Animals Panjarapolas  A Jaina Panjarapola (shelter for cattle) in Panchasar, a village near Shankhesvara in Gujarat. When the cow of a Hindu has grown too old for giving milk he usually no longer feeds her but lets her roam about as she likes; under no circumstance would he kill her. To rescue these...

Bahubali-A Saint's Heritage As a holder of an academic degree of education from the university of Bombay, the late Acharya Muni Samantabhadra committed his life to educating the young The spreading of knowledge, we have seen, is a duty for the Jaina; it belongs to dana the giving of gifts. Acharya Samantabhadra, who lived half...

Dharmasthala A Unique Model Of Charity For those of us who for some reason or other have lost faith in humanity, a visit to Dharmasthala in Karnataka (see map, p. 28) should help to activate one's immunity to this kind of modern ailment. But it would have to be a stay longer as a halfday...

The Jaina Women's Ashram At Sholapur In Jainism, nothwithstanding the rather stringent rules of conduct, there is room for unconventional innovators, male and female. This liberal outlook enhanced by the trust in the potential resourcefulness of human nature can be traced back to Mahavira who was one of the great innovators of his time. He...

The Veerayatan Ashram At Rajgir Offering help to the needy is common to all Jaina sects. The above featured eye camp was conducted by a Digambara community. Some weeks later, at Rajgir in Bihar our last place of sojourn on our way to Parishnatha Hill, we found hos pitable lodging and board in the Vecrayatan...

Eye-Camp For The Poorest Of The Poor A group of Jaina lay people from Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh has raised a sufficient sum of money to conduct a so-called eye-camp. We were invited to join a team of two doctors, one male one female, and their helpers on their way to the camp. After a...

Charitable & Social Tradition In Jainism Do your duty and do it as humanely as you can- this, in brief, is the primary principle of Jainism Vilas A. Sangare When it comes to providing shelter and medical aid to the needy and injured, the Jainas do not distinguish between humans and animals. The first European...

Madhuban & Sammeta Shikhara View of Madhuban at sunset Madhuban, the easternmost Jaina "temple-city', embedded among trees at the foot of Parashnath Hill (better known as Sammeta Shikhara or Sametshikhar), comes to life hours before sunrise. As early as three in the morning the first pilgrims, the youngest safely tied to the back of an...

Pavapuri A pair of footprints, cut from black stone in high relief and enshrined in this scenically situated Mahavira Mandir at Pavapuri, is the austere yet appropriate memorial of Mahavira's attainment of nirvana. Every year at Divali, the day of his death, a big fair of lights is held at Pavapuri. Pavapuri in Bihar is...

Rajgir If some day the world's leading advocates of animal rights should require a suitable site for a monument to commemorate the beginning of what by now has become a world-wide concern of millions of people - the protection of all that lives - Rajgir, anciently Rajagriha, in Bihar would be the place to choose....