Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide
Margo Kitts (ed.)
Published:
2018
Online ISBN:
9780190656522
Print ISBN:
9780190656485
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Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide
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Anne Vallely
Pages
182–204
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Published:
May 2018
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Vallely, Anne, 'Dying Heroically: Jainism and the Ritual Fast to Death', in Margo Kitts (ed.), Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide (
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Abstract
Within the Jaina tradition, the ideal and most celebrated death is a voluntary, fully conscious fast which aims to “scratch out the body” for the sake of the soul. Called sallekhanā, the fast is understood to be the pinnacle of nonviolence, because it entails the complete eradication of the passions that are the root cause of violence. But above all, sallekhanā is understood by Jains to be heroic; it is the ultimate culmination of a courageous life dedicated to the soul’s emancipation from the cycle of birth and death. The equation of sallekhanā with heroism is an ancient one in the Jain imagination, and continues to govern the way in which the religious death is understood and practiced by Jains in the early twenty-first century. This chapter explores the central role that heroism plays within the ritual fast to death and, more fundamentally, within the Jain tradition.
Keywords: asceticism, ahiṇsā, nonviolence, renunciation, mendicancy, Jainism, voluntary death, sallekhanā, heroic death, suicide
Subject
Religious Studies
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
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