RELIGIOUS SECTS OF THE HINDUS. 277 



Besides these particular festivals, the Jains observe several that are 

 common to the Hindus, as the Vasantayatrd, or spring festival, the 

 Sripanchami, and others ; they also hold in veneration certain of the Lunar 

 days, as the 2d, 5th, 8th, 11th and 12th; on these no new work should be 

 undertaken, no journey commenced, and fasting, or abstinence at least, 

 and continence should be observed. 



The origin of the Jain faith is immersed in the obscurity which 

 invests all remote history amongst the Hindus. That it is the most 

 recent of all the systems pursued in Hindustan is rendered highly 

 probable by the extravagances in which it deals, by the doctrines it 

 opposes to those of all other schools, and by the comparatively recent date 

 of many Jain authors of celebrity and of numerous monumental reliques ; 

 but at what period it actually took its rise it is not easy to determine. * 

 Mr. Colebrooke has suggested the probability of the Jain religion 

 being the work of Parswanath, in the account of whom there is a nearer 

 approach to sober history and credible chronology than in the narratives 

 of his predecessors — this would throwback the origin of the Jain faith to 



* Major Delamaine observes, " the usual idea of the Jains being a modern sect may not be 

 erroneous : the doctrines originating with Rishabha, and continued by Arhanta, dividing at periods of 

 schism into more distinct classes, of which the Jains or Srdwacs, as now established from one, and 



the modern Buddhas, as in Burma, Siam, Ceylon, Tibet, &c. another Major Delamaine, T. R. A. S. 



1. 427. " Were I disposed to speculate on the origin of the Jains, from the striking coincidences of 

 doctrine and religious usages between them and the Bouddhists, I should be led to conjecture that 

 they were originally a set of Bouddhists." —Mr. Er shine, Bombay Trans. 3.502. " It is certainly 

 probable, as remarked by Dr. Hamilton and Major Delamaine, that the Gautama of the Jainas 

 and of the Bauddhas, is the same personage, and this leads to the further surmise that both these 



sects are branches of one stock Both have adopted the Hindu Pantheon, or assemblage of 



subordinate deities— both disclaim the authority of the Vedas, and both elevate their pre-eminent 

 saints to divine supremacy — Mr. Colebrooke, Trans. R. A. 8. 1.521. 



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