: : : What happened to the body? There would be no body. Sauron's body(form), corporeal or otherwise, was maintained by his spirit. Once his spirit fled the form, the form would cease to exist. It would either crumble,like Saruman's, or simply vanish.

: : : While the loss of his body did weaken Sauron's spirit, the loss of his spirit within the Ring weakened him even more. Following the destruction of his body during the downfall of Numenor, he possessed the Ring and took a new form far more quickly than he did following the loss of the Ring.

: : : As I say, in my reply above, I believe it was his spirit trapped in the Ring that prevented him from taking a complete,in this case ten fingered, form.
: : : ~Aelmer

: : The corporeal form of Sauron is not an irrelevance. The mere threat of serious damage to his fana in the First Age (a dog had him by the throat) was sufficient to send him scurrying into hiding. This is when he was not particularily wedded to a single corporeal form. The threat to his abilities and effective existence of physical damage was far greater after the Akkalabeth when his form became fixed.

: : Isildur cut the finger and Ring off Sauron when he had been severly wounded by Gil-galad and Elendil and could not put up effective resistance. Sauron had been rendered incapable by physical actions and physical weapons (though these probably had spiritual dimensions also). The reason Sauron could not regenerate his finger was that it had been cut off by one of the shards of Narsil not that the Ring was lost. If Sauron had merely taken off the Ring would his finger have dissappeared?

: : I imagine that either Sauron's spirit was so wedded to his physical form that any mutilation of one affected the other; or that Narsil had a particular quality which deranged Sauron's spirit even as it mutilated his body.

: : The loss of the Ring did have grave effects, as you say, on Sauron's abilities to regenerate quickly, but not I think on his ability to regenerate his digit.

: : We have every reason to beleive that the form Sauron took following the Akkalabeth was different to a "normal" Ainu fana, therefore it would be distinct from that of Saruman or Gandalf (when Grey) and even these were different from normal fanas (they aged in appearence). It therefore is not safe to extrapolate the fate of Sauron's inert body from that of Saruman or that of any other Maia.

: OK, agreed. But I still say the body without his spirit is an irrelevance - my personal belief is that it would crumble away/disappear, as the spirit of the Maia 'makes' or 'takes' the form - when the spirit is no longer present, the form cannot exist
: What I am saying is that the Form IS the Spirit, incarnate. The spirit flees - the form does not exist. The 2 are intrinsically linked, but the spirit rules.
: They are the same thing in essence - so yes, harm to the physical form is DIRECT harm to the Maia itself - hence 9 fingered Sauron in T.A.
: However when the spirit flees (the Maia flees if you like in spirit form) - the body no longer exists
: Am I making sense??
: So an irrelevance - no body to destroy IMHO
: Don Q

Yes, you're making sense. We are saying essentially the same thing concerning the existence of Sauron's body (form) after he abandoned it. There would be no form (body) to destroy, since the existence of the form depends on the spirit being within the form.

As to the form being the spirit, incarnate, and harm to form causing harm to the spirit. I have trouble accepting that. If that were the case, every scrape, cut or bug bite inflicted on Gandalf's body would have harmed his spirit.

To my knowledge there is only one case where an Aniur's spirit was wedded to its form (body) in such a manner, that was Morgorth's. In his case, it was a punishment for his actions.

I believe Sauron's inability to form a tenth finger was linked directly to his spirit entrapped in the Ring. Sauron's spirit, and all Aniur's, was finite. Whatever form taken, was taken by the whole spirit. Sauron's spirit was not whole. Therefore whatever form was taken, would be incomplete.

As an aside, this would explain how Isildur could remove the ring from Sauron's severed finger. Sauron's spirit within the Ring was still in contact with the form of the finger, and thus maintained the finger.
~Aelmer