xv. Nindā.It is also a very serious sin to be always criticizing and finding fault (Nindā). The Jaina tell many stories to show that one should look at one’s own sins and not at the sins of others, saying that if one is continually thinking of the faults of others, one’s own mind becomes debased and one grows like the very sinners one criticizes.
xvi. Rati, Arati.It is natural for an ascetic religion to reckon the lack of self-control in the presence of either joy or sorrow (Rati Arati) as a very grave sin, tending, as it does, not only to injury of health and spirits, but also to excessive attachment to temporal and transitory objects of affection.
xvii. Māyāmṛiṣā.The seventeenth form of sin in our list, Māyāmṛiṣā, is very far-reaching. It is that species of untruthfulness which in ordinary conversation leads to suggestio falsi, and which in rehgion leads to hypocrisy. The Jaina love of the countryside and their shrewd country wit is shown in the fact that the typical example they quote of the hypocrite is the stork. This bird, they declare, stands on the river bank on only one leg (to pretend he has the least possible connexion with the things of earth) and seems to be lost in meditation, but, if a fish appear, he swoops down and kills it, thus committing the sin of hirhsa, the most heinous of all crimes, whilst professing to be engaged in devotion.
xviii. Mithyādarśana Śalya.The last of the eighteen sins, Mithyādarśana Śalya, embraces those that spring from false faith, such as holding the renegade Gośāla, who was nothing but a failure, to be a Tīrthaṅkara, or believing in a false religion,[1] or taking a man who is a hypocrite for one’s guru. There are altogether twenty-five divisions of the sin of false faith, but we need only glance at one or two of the most important, as throwing an interesting light on the way Jaina regard the religions by which they are surrounded. Such are Laukika mithyātva, or believing in such gods as Gaṇeśa or Hanumān, whom the Jaina do not believe to be- ↑ All religions outside Jainism are false, but those which do not inculcate compassion are specially unworthy of credence.
