Girl Suffers Torture To Become A Jam Nun

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19124, 19 September 1936, Page 10

Girl Suffers Torture To Become A Jam Nun

BOMBAY, Aug.,l. TO enter a Jain nunnery the 18-year-old daughter of a wealthy merchant of Vankaner, a town in Kathiawar, has just submitted to the ordeal of initiation which culminates with the plucking out. of her hair by the roots.

The town was en fere for the occasion, which was marked by elaborate ceremony.

After going through a holy bath in the morning, the girl, Lilavati, was taken in procession to the nunnerj where she offered obeisance to the'pro siding priestess. Returning home, she had her last dinner with her family and (hen another procession was formed.

Largo crowds from surrounding towns and villages lined the route and frequent halts were made to distribute food and drinks of .sugared water to the crowd. The girl walked serenely along, scattering silver and copper coins to the thr,ong. Hair Plucked Out.

Received by a group of .lain priests and priestesses she went through long ceremonial before donning the white garments of a Jainist nun. Then followed the most important and strongest part of the ceremony. The girl's beautiful hair was plucked out by hand, Lilavati bearing it without a murmur. A community dinner attended by 3000 people ended the festivities marking the occasion. Before entering the nunnery Lilavati said that the idea of renunciation had first come to her at the age of nine, since when she had constantly studied the Jain scriptures and spent most of her spare time in the company of an aged nun. Ascetic Life.

Jain, monks and nuns, lead a most ascetic life of celibacy, eating only such food as is guaranteed not to have involved any killing, which is anathema to the Jains. So far do they go in their rigorous life that they will go without food for a whole day in penance if told that drinking water they have swallowed -lias been heated, for then they consider they have killed hundreds of microbes in the water.