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HISTORY OF JAINA MONACHISM
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Besides these, a peculiar expression, perhaps due to popular contamination of usage, was also expressed. It was: 'went to the city of gods'.453 It may be noted that a twelfth century inscription also uses the expression "became the dearest to the hearts of celestial women" to denote death of an ascetic!454
References to the mode of death called 'sallekhana' occur in South Indian inscriptions as early as in the 5th cent. A.D.455 These references are numerous in the 7th and the 8th centuries A.D.456
The epigraphs of the tenth457 and the eleventh458 centuries, and after that, those as late as459 in V. S. 1652 and in A.D. 1809460 record this mode of death.
The following items may be noted regarding the mode of death as revealed in epigraphs.
(i) Not only ascetics, but even kings resorted to fast unto death: for instance, Indra IV of the Raṣṭrakūtas, Märasimha of the Ganga family, and Lakṣmimati wife of the Jaina general Ganga Rāja.
(ii) This mode of death was common both to the Digambara and the Svetämbara monks and laymen-male and female-as epigraphs not only from the south but also from Rajputana and other parts of north India refer to it.
(iii) It seems that as early as in c. 700 A.D., Sravana Belgola was receiving the importance of a tirtha, and people from distant places came to breathe their last there.461
(iv) The exact mode of death as described in one of the Sravana Belgola epigraphs is as follows:
"Meghacandra-traividya-deva... aware of the approach of his death, assuming the palyańka posture, meditating on the soul, attained the world.
453. E.I., III, p. 207, v. 72, of S. 1050.
454. E.C., II, 63 of 1163 A.D.
455. RICE, Mys, and Cg. 1, 370, quoted by K. P. JAIN, JA., XII, ii, p. 74.
456. "..About eighty (epigraphs), many of which go back to the 7th and the 8th centuries, record the death of men and women, mostly monks and nuns, by religious suicide."-L. RICE, E.C., II, Intr. p. 69. See Ibid., Nos. 79, 80, 84, 88, 93, 95, etc., all of c. 700 A.D., except for No. 79 which is of c. 750 A.D.
457. Ibid., 59, of 974 A.D.; Ibid., V, p. 152, of A.D. 975; Ibid., II, 133 of 982 A.D. 458. Ibid., VI, Mg. 17, of 1062 A.D.; for twelfth cent. A.D., Ibid., II, 67 of A.D. 1129; 127 of 1115 A.D.; 128, 170 of 1217 A.D.; V, Bel. 133 of 1279 A.D., etc.
459. E.I., II, p. 38 mentions the death of Hiravijaya by fasting. 460. See Ibid., V, p. 152, fn. 1.
461. E.C., II, Intr. p. 73.
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