________________
Sallekhanā is not Suicide
91
Everyone who has studied the Jaina Scriptures on the exposition of the principles and rules of Sallekhanā must admit that observance of the vow is a conscious and well-planned penance for self-realisation. A person committing suicide is weighed down wholly by mundane considerations.
Some of the Western writers have stated that Sallekhapa is suicide by starvation. In my opinion, the reasons for such view are not far to seek. They are born and brought up under a religious philosophy which speaks of the world and man as creations of God and that death by fasting, though, in accordance with the principles of an ancient religious philosophy which does not recognise any creator-God, is self-destruction against the will of God. They do not seem to have paid any attention to the various points of distinction between Sallekhanā and suicide. Durkheim has observed :" Men cannot be prevented from taking their lives through meditations on the mysteries surrounding us or through belief in an all powerful being, but infinitely removed from ourselves, to whom we shall have to give account only in an undetermined future.”19 Though she recognises that people die through meditation, she is unable to get over the idea that everybody has to render account of his deeds to God after death. The implication that all such deaths are accountable to God appears to be quite clear. As regards Jainism, she says that “the believer allowed himself to die of hunger.” No further commentary is needed on this remark.
Dr. Radhakrishnan regards Sallekhana a "form of suicide." As I have said earlier, the word suicide is being used very losely without weighing the points of distinction. The words mahā prasthāna and samadhi-marana are used in the Hindu scriptures. It seems that the writers on Hindu Dharma Sastra have not laid down such stringent rules of conquest of passions, purification of mind, regulated fasting and meditation as being the pre-requisites for adoption of the vow.
12. Suicide by Durkheim, p. 376.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
