In the case of Jainism, its survival is largely attributable to its very strict teachings on nyāyopattadhana, the Jain version of right livelihood. Since the Jains held that even unintentional activities generate karma, they sought to avoid not only those modes of livelihood that ineluctably and always cause harm, but also any which might do so only incidentally or occasionally.Bankei wrote:Hi
I have been wondering. Why do you think it was only Buddhism that died out in India while other religions such as Brahmanism or Hinduism or Jainism survive?
Surely the Muslim invasion should have wiped out the other 'idolatrous' religions too.
From Christopher Capple’s Jainism and Ecology:
Eventually Jains came to largely eschew agriculture in all its forms and to specialise chiefly in mercantile occupations, with the most favoured ones being jewellery-making and money-lending (I believe this is still the case today; the Indian banking system, for example, was at its inception largely a Jain creation). The Jains became very accomplished in these two fields and ended up doing rather well for themselves.
Now in Muslim conquests everywhere, one recurrent feature is that the wealthiest people in the population are not encouraged to convert to Islam, for it’s more profitable to let them keep their own religion and then compel them to pay the infidels’ tax. And so since the richest people in India happened to be the Jains, their conquerors turned a blind eye to their ‘idolatry’ and didn’t go out of their way to make Muslims of them.