ABSTRACT
Clearly this view of the j⁄va was one which the Jains felt it necessary to defend and the crude materialist view of the identity of the body and soul is subjected to an early assault in the flvetåmbara upån≥ga, the ‘Questions of King Prasenajit’ (RP). This work describes a discussion between Prasenajit, who is presented as a kind of naive empiricist, and the Jain monk Ke¬in. Prasenajit had been in the habit of carrying out experiments on criminals to test for the possible existence of the soul. For example, he threw one into a tightly sealed cauldron and as the soul of the suffocated man was not observed to emerge when it was opened, he concluded that soul and body must be identical. On other occasions, he weighed a convicted thief before and after execution and also dissected a corpse, but was unable to find any physical evidence for the existence of anything corresponding to a soul.
