SHAÎTYA OF KARLI.]

When my friend finished these words there did not seem to be anything
particular left in heaven or earth to talk about. At any rate, there
was a dead pause for several minutes. Finally, I asked--and I protest
that in contrast with the large matters wherof Bhima Gandharva had
discoursed my voice (which is American and slightly nasal) sounded
like nothing in the world so much as the squeak of a sick rat--"When
were these things written?"

"At least nineteen hundred and seventy-five years ago, we feel sure.
How much earlier we do not know."

We now directed our course toward the hospital for sick and disabled
animals which has been established here in the most crowded portion of
Black Town by that singular sect called the Jains, and which is only
one of a number of such institutions to be found in the large cities
of India. This sect is now important more by influence than by numbers
in India, many of the richest merchants of the great Indian cities
being among its adherents, though by the last census of British India
there appears to be but a little over nine millions of Jains and
Buddhists together, out of the one hundred and ninety millions of
Hindus in British India. The tenets of the Jains are too complicated
for description here, but it may be said that much doubt exists as
to whether it is an old religion of which Brahmanism and Buddhism are
varieties, or whether it is itself a variety of Buddhism. Indeed,
it does not seem well settled whether the pure Jain doctrine
was atheistical or theistical. At any rate, it is sufficiently
differentiated from Brahmanism by its opposite notion of castes, and
from Buddhism by its cultus of nakedness, which the Buddhists abhor.