Ancient history of India reveals that there were two parallel traditions in India, viz. Vedic and Sramanic. The Sramana Tradition includes Jainism, Buddhism and others such as the Ajivikas and Ajtianas. Jain religious tradition is one of the oldest living religions of India. Historicity of 24th Tirthankara Mahavira in sixth century BCE is well established. The Jain records mention the name of 23 tirthankaras before Mahavira. Among them Parsvanatha was the 23rd and Neminatha was the 22nd.
Parsvanatha is now acknowledged as a historical figure by a number of scholars. The existence of Parsva’s Order in Mahavira’s time is recorded as a discussion between the followers of Parsva (caturyama) and those of Mahavira (pancayama) in the Uttara-adhyayanasiitra. Keeping this fact in mind, International School for Jain Studies (ISJS) in association with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORT) organized a two-day International Seminar on “Traces of Sramana Tradition (with special reference to Jainism): Prior to 650 BCE” on 5-6 October 2019 in Pune. This book contains 13 selected papers presented in this seminar exploring the available archaeological, cultural, social and literary evidences to substantiate the existence of Jain tradition before 650 BCE.
Jainism regards life to be eternal. Recognizing that the soul can never die, but merely takes a new body, a careful tradition welcoming death through intentional fasting developed more than two thousand years ago. A legal challenge Rajasthan was put forward in 2013, suggesting that this practice is harmful and coercive and targets women in particular. For a short while Sallekhanā, which means the “thinning of existence,” was declared illegal. In response to this controversy, three conferences were convened by the International School for Jain Studies to explore the legal, religious, and medical aspects of this practice. Experts discussed the long history of the practice, attested to in epigraphs throughout India; the ways in which fasting to death has become an acceptable practice in the Western world; and contemporary instances of its observance in India. This volume presents an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the end of life, from biomedical, historical, religious, and legal perspectives.
