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One of the most striking features of these tales of the earlier lives of
Parsvanatha is the emphasis throughout on the ruthless opposition of a dark
brother whose development is the very antithesis of that of the savior.
Parsvanatha increases in virtue, but his dark brother, simultaneously, in evil,
until the principle of light represented in the Tirthankara finally wins, and the
brother himself is saved. (Zimmer, 1969, 185)
Sinclaire is much more than a Western antagonist, belonging clearly in the group of individuals
whose movement towards evil parallels the protagonist’s towards good. Birth into an
aristocratic family indicates, under the Indian system, good progress in previous lives, but does
not preclude regression or the assumption of a dark brother role. Just as Sinclaire’s evil role
would be a continuation from earlier lives of interference with Alex’s spiritual development,
her light would tend to counteract the brutalising effects of the karma accrued by his darkness,
preventing his slip into darker levels of existence. There is no direct information beyond the
present lives of Alex and Sinclaire, but, when seen in these terms, her light and his darkness
tend to pull each other along in a microcosmic struggle of dharma and adharma.
Sinclaire is what Western psychology would call Alex’ alter ego, representing a dark
side of her mask. He is a foil to Alex, but is not just the setting which accentuates the beauty
of her diamond. It is only when the setting and diamond are placed together that there is
beauty and light. They mirror each other enough to make others think they are brother and
sister, and d’Alpuget makes it very clear that he is the wilder side of the animal aspects of the
twin-cousins, writing, ‘Sinclaire’s wolfish features were an exaggeration of Alex’s small, neat
ones’. Yet it goes deeper than surface resemblances. There was ‘something in their bone-
structure, in their long-limbed build, that announced in each the flesh of the other’. Alex and
Sinclaire are metaphors of the self/other double. Separately, they are weak and incomplete;
together, they make up a round, developed and formidable character.
Their opposing attitudes are exhibited in their faces—Alex’s is described as ‘candid’
while the wolfish Sinclaire’s is ‘resourceful’; Alex’s eyes are the same as Sinclaire’s, only
‘drawn larger and more innocent’. Most importantly perhaps, Alex’s ‘hair was dark sherry
colour, almost red’ (MD, 7), which establishes her place within the scheme of Jainist colour
symbolism, where ‘the prudent, honest, magnanimous, and devout are fiery red’ (Zimmer,
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