renounced envy, but agreed also to renounce their kingdoms, the possession of which had given rise to so great a sin. They became Jaina sādhus and lived at Śatruñjaya, and passing from thence to mokṣa they became Siddha. And still on the full moon day of the month Kārtika, when the faithful go on pilgrimage to Śatruñjaya, they remember the two brothers who gave up all things to free themselves from envy.
xii. Kleśa.Quarrelsomeness or Kleśa, the twelfth form of sin, is specially dangerous to family happiness, as we can easily understand, when we remember how many members of a family live under one roof in India. This is believed to be the particular vice to which mothers-in-law are liable, and it is often only owing to the influence of this sin that they complain of their daughter-in-law’s cooking! The Jaina scriptures are full of examples of the evils that spring from such quarrelsomeness, showing that it has often not only ruined families but even destroyed kingdoms.
xiii. Abhyākhyāna.So greatly do the Jaina value the peace of their homes, that the next sin, slander (Abhyākhyāna), is also looked at chiefly as a home-wrecking sin. So grievous a crime is it, that nature will work a miracle to discredit it, as illustrated by the following legend. In a certain city a fierce mother-in-law accused her son’s wife of unchastity. The poor girl could only protest her innocency, but was quite unable to prove it, till suddenly a great calamity befell the city: the massive gates of the town stuck fast and could not be moved! An astrologer, being called in to help, declared that they could only be opened by a woman so chaste that she could draw water from a well in a sieve and sprinkle with it the obdurate gates. The accused girl seized this chance to prove her innocency, and did it so successfully that her slanderer was confounded and condemned.[1]
xiv. Paiśunya.Paiśunya, or telling stories to discredit any one, is another sin resembling in its guilt that of slander.
- ↑ This story is told in The Lives of Sixteen Chaste Women, a famous Jaina classic.
