Prayopavesha (prāyopaveśa)

Prayopavesha is the practice of sitting down to fast until death, undertaken either as a religious end to life or as an ultimate form of protest and pressure. The Mahabharata shows both uses: sages threaten it to compel a god, and the aged Dhritarashtra and Gandhari go to the forest to end their lives by austerity. It stands behind the epic's larger interest in choosing the manner and moment of one's death, which Bhishma exercises most spectacularly.