nise twenty-five Buddhas or divine
prophets, who appeared at long epochs of time and taught the same
system one after another; and the Jains have twenty-four Tirthakars
or Tirthankars, who similarly taught their religion. Of these only
Vardhamana, its real founder, who was the twenty-fourth, and possibly
Parsva or Parasnath, the twenty-third and the founder's preceptor,
are or may be historical. The other twenty-two Tirthakars are purely
mythical. The first, Rishaba, was born more than 100 billion years ago,
as the son of a king of Ajodhya; he lived more than 8 million years,
and was 500 bow-lengths in height. He therefore is as superhuman
as any god, and his date takes us back almost to eternity. The
others succeeded each other at shorter intervals of time, and show
a progressive decline in stature and length of life. The images of
the Tirthakars are worshipped in the Jain temples like those of the
Buddhas in Buddhist temples. As with Buddhism also, the main feature
of Jain belief is the transmigration of souls, and each successive
incarnation depends on the sum of good and bad actions or _karman_
in the previous life. They hold also the primitive animistic doctrine
that souls exist not only in animals and plants but in stones, lumps
of earth, drops of water, fire and wind, and the human soul may pass
even into these if its sins condemn it to such a fate. [272]

4. The transmigration of souls.

The aim which Jainism, like Buddhism, sets before its disciples
is the escape from the endless round of successive existences,
known as Samsara, through the extinction of the _karman_ or sum of
actions. This is attained by complete subjection of the passions and
destruction of all desires and appetites of the body and mind, that
is, by the most rigid asceticism, as well as by observing all the
moral rules prescribed by the religion. It was the Jina or prophet
who showed this way of escape, and hence he is called Tirthakar or
'The Finder of the Ford,' through the ocean of existence. [273]
But Jainism differs from Buddhism in that it holds that the soul,
when finally emancipated, reaches a heaven and there continues for
ever a separate intellectual existence, and is not absorbed into
Nirvana or a state of blessed nothingness.

5. Strict rules against taking life.

The moral precepts of the Jains are of the same type as those of
Buddhism and Vaishnavite Hinduism, but of an excessive rigidity,
at any rate in the cas