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Traverses on less trodden path...
the earliest Jaina Agamas.62 Umāsvāti Vācaka (5th century A.D.), also in his monumental work Tattvārthasūtra, refers to this vow.83 Sallekhana is a vow to be adopted for seeking liberation of the soul from the body as a religious duty during a calamity, severe famine, old age or illness from which there is no remedy. 64 lo tbis ceremony many kings, men and women alike took part and devoted themselves to contemplation of the divinity for days without food or water. Sravanabelagola inscriptions are full of such instances. But all are not authorised to follow this path. Only those who have acquired the highest degree of perfection in the spiritual path are allowed to choose this religious vow. Except death by fasting, all other kinds of speedy methods of voluntary deaths are denounced as vulgar and evil by the Jainas. 66
Even Buddhist literature, notwithstanding the opposition of the Buddba, is full of stories of various kinds of self-immolation. The Majjhima-Nikayas 7 states that a husband threatened with separation from his beloved wife, kills her and also himself in order that they may be united as husband and wife in their next birth. There are many stories which prove beyond doubt that, Buddhism, in certain cases and in certain circumstances, approved self-immolation. The stories relating to self-immolation attempt of Siba, Sappadasa, Vakkali and Godhika are good examples of this fact.68 The stories of a future sākyamuni who gave his body to feed a starving tigress 9 and the legend of Bhaisajyaraja?o who filled his body with all sorts of oil and set it on fire are worth noticing. Säntidasa io his Sikşásammuccaa ya?! (a compendium of the rules of the disciple of the Great Vehicle), prohibits only those from self-immolation, who are just beginoers on the path of spirituality, imply. ing that, the spiritually advanced may resort to this method of self-immo. lation under certain circumstances.
62. Icārāngasūtra, Sacred Books of the East-XXII, I-VII 5-8, pp. 74-78. 63. Tattvärthādhigamasutra, Vol. II, ed. H. R. Kapadia, Pub. J. B. Javeri, Bombay.
1930, VII-32. 64. Samantabhadra, Ratnakarandaka Śrāvakācāru, Puls. Jivara ja G. Doshi, Sholapur,
1954, verse 122. 65. Sallekhana is not Suicide , pp. 18-63. 66. Kathakosa, translated by C. H. Tawney, London, 1895, p. 8.
7. Majjhima-nikaya--II' p. 109. 68. History of Suicide in India, pp. 107-109. 69. A Study of the Jatakamālā, ed. K. K. Misra, Pub. G. N. Jha Kendriya Sanskrit
Vidya Peetha, Allahabad, 1971, pp. 230-231. 70. Saddharmapuüdarika, Sacred Books of the East-XXI. 71. Bibliotheca Buddhicā-I, Petrogard, 1902.
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