Fasting Unto Death According To Jaina Tradition

Author(s): Colette Caillat
Publisher: Colette Caillat

Page 1

FASTING UNTO DEATH ACCORDING TO
THE JAINA TRADITION*
BY COLETTE CAILLAT CNRS, ERA 094, University of Paris
Since about 1900 a number of thorough studies have been devoted to the various forms of suicide which are known to have taken place in India.1 Recent contributions on the subject of
* This is the revised text of lectures given in 1972 at the Universities of Stockholm and Copenhagen. I thank these Institutions as well as Professor S. Lienhard, Professor H. Hendriksen, and Dr. I. Fišer for their kind invitation. My sincere thanks also go to Mr. K. R. Norman (University of Cambridge, U.K.) and to Dr. Eric Grinstead, who were kind enough to amend the English text, and to Mrs. Else Pauly and the Acta Orientalia, who made the necessary arrangements for the publication of the present essay.
1 Cf. among many others, Encyclopaedia of Religions and Ethics 12, 24 ff. 'Suicide (Buddhist)' by La Vallée Poussin, and 12, 33ff. 'Suicide (Hindu)' by A. B. Keith, ubi alia (also concerning the Jainas). Moreover, Hopkins, 'On the Hindu Custom of Dying to Redress a Grievance', JAOS 21, 1901, 146–159; Hillebrandt, 'Der freiwillige Feuertodt in Indien und die Somaweihe', SBAW 1917, 19f. To these, it seems advisable to add some thought-provoking studies on the so-called sati (though J. Filliozat (cf. n. 3] would separate this custom from the other cases of voluntary death, cf. 'La mort volontaire', p. 38, see however, 'L'abandon de la vie', p. 79): especially Winternitz's chapter on 'Die Witwenverbrennung', in Die Frau in den indischen Religionen (Leipzig 1920), p. 55-85, ubi alia; or Th. Zachariae's illuminating papers 'Zur indischen Witwenverbrennung', Zeitschr. des Vereins für Volkskunde in Berlin, 14, 1904, 198–210; 302–313; 395-407; 15, 1905, 74–90; 'Sieben Mal auf die Welt kommen', WZKM 23, 1, 1909, 220-230; Edward Thompson, Suttee, A Historical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Hindu Rite of Widow-Burning, (London 1928).--On sati according to śruti- and smsti-rules, L. Sternbach, 'Indian Tales and the Smsti-s', The Tale of the Clever Magician (Vikramacarita 30) Vishveshvaranand Indological Journal 10 (1972) [= Vish. Ind. Paper Series 310), p. 47-61; 145–150 (no 35 of the author's Juridical Studies in Ancient Indian Law).
Moreover, the Brahmanical facts have been collected and discussed by Kane,