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tual master, one can die a pure death, leading to perfect Attainment.
The paramount importance of the last moments is considerably stressed in other Paiņņayas: for instance, in the Bhattapaccakkhāņa ('Renouncing of food') and the Samthāra (“Deathbed'), where the last rites are detailed. 74 In these booklets, there is, as it were, a shift of emphasis: they do not insist on the necessity of a hard, lifelong training; this, apparently, could be replaced by the ceremonial which they teach. Moreover, they apparently make no basic difference between the lay-follower and the monk, whose case they examine jointly.75
Whereas the Ayār required a long experience, a hard ascetic training, before the monk would be allowed to fast unto death, the younger texts seem mainly to consider objective circumstances: old age, illness, difficult material conditions, etc.76
The Bh(atta-paccakkhāņa) and S(amthāra) prescribe the scrutiny of the place and the death-bed; and the preparation of the devotee spiritually (S 53-54). The dying man should have time enough to make himself ready for death, and to perform a sort of rehearsal.
First, he should solemnly proclaim his decision, in the presence of his guru, whose help he asks for (Bh 17-18). He further must know, accept, and observe the three conditions of the 'wise man's death': confession, expiation of his faults, and renewal of the Jaina Vows (Bh 19; 27–29). Then, the man takes his place on his death-bed, thus signifying that he is henceforth no longer in the world.77
Now comes an intermediate phase,--of renunciation. Master
74 See the critical detailed analysis of Bh and S and, moreover, of the relevant passages from other Paiņņayas, in Kamptz, Sterbefasten, p. 8 foll.; specially p. 18 foll.
75 Cf. Bh 28-29.
76 Bh 14; S 32; Kamptz, p. 18. Cf. the Brahmanic dispositions discussed by Kane, H Dh II, 2, 926; Buddhaghosa's statements (supra n. 6); the decision of the Indian philosopher' Kalanos who, being more than seventy, and being afflicted with illness, requests Alexander to have a funeral pyre prepared for him and perishes in its flames (Diodorus Siculus XVII, 107, etc., often quoted).
77 Cf. Bh 33: samthāraya-pavvajjam pavvajjai ...
