The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c6.s6.3

c6.s6.3

Thus, for instance, the *Uttarajjhāyā* of the Jaina Canon contains two stories where a Jaina monk remonstrates with a group of brahmins engaged in a sacrifice on the wrongfulness of their behavior.⁸⁷ The interesting point is that the monk does not condemn the institution of sacrifice as such; on the contrary, he exhorts the brahmins to perform the true sacrifice—that is, the renunciatory way of life of the monk—and he declares that the true brahmin is the monk. In the same way the Buddhist *Kūṭadanta Sutta* (*Dīgha Nikāya* 5) gives a hierarchy of sacrifices, the highest sacrifices being the way of life of the monk and final emancipation.