A History of Indian Literature v2.c20.s2.103

v2.c20.s2.103

The ninth Aṅga gives a hopelessly monotonous account of how the saints again and again attain to the highest perfection by starving themselves to death. To our minds at least, it is not very edifying to have the "beauty of asceticism" illustrated by a minute description of every single part of the body, accompanied by a series of drastic comparisons, in order to show how lean and emaciated it had grown. It is a remarkable contradiction: this exaggerated love of death on the part of the Jaina saint, and on the other hand, the equally exaggerated fear of killing any living thing, even though it might be only a worm or a green herb.