Life in Ancient India as Depicted in the Jain Canons, with Commentaries: An Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey c15.s4.4

c15.s4.4

Jain texts refer to another custom when the dead bodies were not duly disposed of, but were left uncared for at the mercy of wild beasts and birds.¹⁸⁵ Besides, sometimes according to the instructions of the king, the ascetics had to leave a dead body in a hollow (agada), lake or a flowing river or by the side of these places.¹⁸⁶ Mention has been made of giddha-piṭṭhaka, a kind of death in which a person threw himself among the corpses of human beings, elephants, camels, donkeys, etc., and allowed his body to be devoured by vultures. The bodies of criminals and the indigent were also thrown away to rot when vultures and jackals fed on them.¹⁸⁷ There are also references to the burial of corpses. This custom was in vogue among the mlecchas, who did not cremate the dead bodies but burried them at the burial ground (maḍagagiha : maḍagalena). Such burial houses existed in the country of Dīva and Jona.¹⁸⁸