Two seminal works by S. Settar — Inviting Death and Pursuing Death — which have now been translated into Kannada, will be released by the publication Abhinava during his felicitation on Thursday. They are rare books that explore the theme of voluntary termination of life in Jain philosophy through historical material.
“When I was at Harvard in the Eighties I once walked into a room with 500 books on the theme of death and there was none by an Indian. This provoked me to explore the theme through study of memorial stones and classical literary material. The concept of iccha marana in Indian philosophy remains to this day an unexplored area beyond these two books,” says Prof. Settar. He will be felicitated at Kannada Sahitya Parishath at 6 p.m.
