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Lord Mahavira prevention of fresh inflow of the karmas by systematic control of mental and physical activities and nirjara is the destruction of existing karmas by certain austerflies. Karmas might exhaust themselves by fructifying and leave the soul free. But this natural process must be hastened by deliberate effort. The best way of annihilating karmas is to practise tapas. Mortifying the physical self is an attack on karmas. It expels them from the soul before the time of their natural exhaustion. Jainism thus greatly underlines the value of asceticism and extols the practice of self-torture, fasting and even starving oneself to death.36 As pointed out by Winternitz there is a remarkable contradiction between this exaggerated love of death on the part of Jaina saints and their exaggerated fear of killing any living being. “Perhaps here one may recognise “a distinctly psychopathological element in much of self to are and self-abnegation that goes by the name of asceticism."37 It must also be admitted that according to the Jaina view what is outwardly death of a saint is really the last stage of his attainment of freedom. When one succeeds in destroying the existing karmas by austerities, the soul realizes its inherent qualities of supreme knowledge and unlimited happiness. It attains salvation (Moksha or Mukti), and becomes a perfect being-siddha. Moksa is the seventh tattva or reality. Liberated from the bondage of matter, the jiva ‘at once rises to the top of the universe, above the highest heaven, where it remains in inactive omniscience and bliss through all eternity'. It recovers its pristine purity and power and exists in the state of Siddhahood (perfection) “without caste, unaffected by smell, without the sense of taste, without feeling, without form, without hunger, without old age, without death, without body, without Karma enjoying an endless unbroken calm.38 The Ratna Traya
The quientessence of the Jaina theory of moksha is contained in the triratna concept of Samyagdarsana Samyak jnana and Samyag charitra. Samyagdarsana is considered to be the prime cause of moksha because it paves the way tonight knowledge and right conduct. The Yasastilaka tells us that “it is the prime cause of salvation just as the foundation is the mainstay of a palace, good luck that of beauty, life that of bodily enjoyment, royal power that of victory, culture that of nobility and policy that
