Though at times in conflict with the Brahmans the Jains never departed from India as did the Buddhists, and even Brahmanic priests in some parts of India serve today in Jain temples.

In metaphysics as in religion the Jain differs radically from the Buddhist.  He believes in a dualism not unlike that of the S[=a]nkhyas, whereas Buddhistic philosophy has no close connection with this Brahmanic system.  To the Jain eternal matter stands opposed to eternal spirits, for (opposed to pantheism) every material entity (even water) has its own individual spirit.  The Jain’s Nirv[=a]na, as Barth has said, is escape from the body, not escape from existence.[11] Like the Buddhist the Jain believes in reincarnation, eight births, after one has started on the right road, being necessary to the completion of perfection.  Both sects, with the Brahmans, insist on the non-injury doctrine, but in this regard the Jain exceeds his Brahmanical teacher’s practice.  Both heretical sects claim that their reputed founders were the last of twenty-four or twenty-five prophets who preceded the real founder, each successively having become less monstrous (more human) in form.

The Jain literature left to us is quite large[12] and enough has been published already to make it necessary to revise the old belief in regard to the relation between Jainism and Buddhism.

We have said that Jainism stands nearer to Brahmanism (with which, however, it frequently had quarrels) than does Buddhism.[13] The most striking outward sign of this is the weight laid on asceticism, which is common to Brahmanism and Jainism but is repudiated by Buddhism.  Twelve years of asceticism are necessary to salvation, as thinks the Jain, and this self-mortification is of the most stringent sort.  But it is not in their different conception of a Nirv[=a]na release rather than of annihilation, nor in the S[=a]nkhya-like[14] duality they affect, nor yet in the prominence given to self-mortification that the Jains differ most from the Buddhists.  The contrast will appear more clearly when we come to deal with the latter sect.  At present we take up the Jain doctrine for itself.

The ‘three gems’ which, according to the Jains,[15] result in the spirit’s attainment of deliverance are knowledge, faith, and virtue, or literally ‘right knowledge, right intuition, and right practices.’  Right knowledge is a true knowledge of the relation of spirit and not-spirit (the world consists of two classes, spirit and non-spirit), the latter being immortal like the former.  Right intuition is absolute faith in the word of the Master and the declarations of the [=A]gamas, or sacred texts.  Right practices or virtue consists, according to the Yogac[=a]stra, in the correct fivefold conduct of one that has knowledge and faith:  (1) Non-injury, (2) kindness and speaking which is true (in so far as the truth is pleasant to the hearer),[16] (3) honorable conduct, typified by ‘not stealing,’ (4) chastity in word, thought, and deed, (5) renunciation of earthly interests.