lives of two, three, four and five senses), either knowingly or intentionally, excepting offending lives living in my body which give pain; but I will not with evil intent destroy vermin or lunatics, and I also vow not to destroy minute one-sensed lives. As long as I live I will not myself kill; nor cause others to kill; nor will I kill by mind, speech, or body.
Thus have I taken the first vow, so I must know the five Atiċāra concerning it, but I must not commit them. I repeat them in their usual order: binding, killing, mutilating, overloading, wrong feeding.'
Another thing forbidden by this vow is the burying of people in a trance; for, as the Jaina sagely remark, it is very likely to kill them!
The Jaina prophesy that certain penalties will be accumulated by acting contrary to this vow. For instance, if a man commit murder, he may die even in this life in an untimely fashion. (The British Government has a knack of seeing that this prophecy is fulfilled!) He may also be drowned, or become a leper, or lose his hands and his feet, if not in this birth, at least in the next.
Mṛiṣāvāda viramaṇa vrata. The second vow (Mṛiṣāvāda viramaṇa vrata) of the Jaina layman is directed against falsehood or exaggeration. In a country where the women live in purdah, one can see how easy a thing it would be to spread untrue or exaggerated reports about them; and so a man who has taken this vow must never tell lies about any girl, including his own daughter, never for example, in order to marry her well, saying that she is younger or prettier than she is, or denying her bodily defects; he must likewise be careful never to speak against a prospective bridegroom. The vow is also concerned with commercial honesty, and forbids a man, for instance, when selling cows or buffaloes to say that they give more milk than they actually do, or when selling land and houses to describe the boundaries or the number of trees on the estate falsely. If the man taking the vows is a banker, he must keep any deposit honestly and give it back when demanded, even if no receipt be producible. If he have to take part in the courts or in the Pañċa,[1] he must never give false evidence.
- ↑ Village Council.
