JOURNAL 
OF 
THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 
No. 16.—April, 1833. 
I.— Account of the Jain Temples on Mount Abi in Guzerdt. By Lieut. 
Burnes, Bombay Army. 
Tue mountain of Abd, Abujt, or Abvighad, is situated near the 25th de- 
gree of north latitude and 73° 20' of east longitude, in the district of 
Sekrii and province of Marwdr, about 40 miles N. E. by E. of the 
camp of Désa. The magnificent temples are erected at the small village 
of Dilwarra, about the centre of the mountain, which has an elevation of 
about 5000 feet, where the summit is extremely irregular and studded 
with peaked hills. There are four in number, all of marble, and two of 
them of the richest kind. They are dedicated to PfrasnAru, or “‘ the 
principal of the deified saints, who according to their creed have suc- 
cessively become superior gods,’ and who are believed to amount to 
the number of twenty-four, or as some told me, to have appeared, like 
the Hindi gods, in twenty-four different Avatars. 
These are the gods of the Jain, Shrdwak, or Banian castes, who 
are a gloomy tribe of atheistical ascetics, not unlike the Budhists, 
“« who deny the authority of God and a future state; believe that as 
the; trees in an uninhabited forest spring up without cultivation, so 
the universe is self-existent ; and that the world, in short, is produced, 
as the spider produces his’ web, out of its own bowels; and that, as 
the banks ofa river fall of themselves, there is no supreme destroyer.” 
** They also deny the divine authority of the Védas, and worship the 
great Hindu gods as minor deities only :” but Mr. Colebrooke and other 
eminent scholars have already given the most minute description of this 
class of people and their worship. The above abstract of their tenets will 
at once show how little acceptable the followers of PArasnATH can be 
to orthodox Hinds; and the costly materials of Jain temples are there- 
fore attributable, uot to the holiness of the gods to whom they are de- 
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