According to one of their own sect of to-day, _ahi[.m]s[=a] paramo dharmas_, 'the highest law of duty is not to hurt a living creature.'[34] The most striking absurdity of the Jain reverence for life has frequently been commented upon.

Almost every city of western India, where they are found, has its beast-hospital, where animals are kept and fed.

An amusing account of such an hospital, called Pi[=n]jra Pol, at Saurar[=a]shtra, Surat, is given in the first number of the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_.[35] Five thousand rats were supported in such a temple-hospital in Kutch.[36] Of all the great religious sects of India that of N[=a]taputta is perhaps the least interesting, and has apparently the least excuse for being.[37] The Jains offered to the world but one great moral truth, withal a negative truth, 'not to harm,' nor was this verity invented by them.

Indeed, what to the Jain is the great truth is only a grotesque exaggeration of what other sects recognized in a reasonable form.

Of all the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid.