Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 541

EARLY HINDU PHILOSOPHERS
501
The sect lias
flourished at one time in great numbers.
In
entirely disappeared from the Peninsula of India l
ancient times the desire of sanctifying themselves in
solitude and of reaching a higher degree of spiritual perfec-
tion induced numerous Brahmins to abandon their resi-
dence in towns and their intercourse with mankind, and
to go and live in the jungle with their wives, whom they
persuaded to follow them. They were favourably received
by those who had originally conceived this praiseworthy
resolution, and from them they learned the rules of their
life of seclusion.
These philosophers brought much dis-
tinction to the Brahmin caste
and it even seems likely
They are
that the Brahmin caste owed its origin to them.
still revered as the first teachers of the human race and the
first lawgivers of their countrj 7
There can be no doubt that it was the fame of these
Yanaprastha Brahmins that excited so lively a curiosity in
Alexander the Great. They were in fact none other than
those Brachmanes and Gymnosophists whose customs,
.
;
.
indeed wholly improbable that all Brahmins conformed to this
but the second verse of the sixth book of the Laws of Manu pre-
scribes that when the father of a family perceives his hair to be turning
grey, or as soon as his first grandchild is born, and after he has paid his
three debts, he is to retire to a forest, and there to practise austerities
as a hermit
Having taken up his sacred fire (agnihotram) and all the domestic
utensils for making oblations to it, and having gone forth from the town
to the forest, let him dwell there with all his organs of sense well re-
1
It is
rule,
:
strained.
With many kinds
or
'
devotional
Let him also
of pure food let
him perform the
five
maha-yugnaa
rites.'
offer
the vaitanika oblations with the (three sacred)
fires
according to rule.
Let him roll backwards and forwards on the ground, or stand all day
on tiptoe (prapadaih) let him move about by alternately standing up
and sitting down, going to the waters to bathe at the three savanas
(sunrise, sunset, and midday).
Let him practise the rules of the lunar penance.
In the hot weather let him be a jxincha tapas.
Let him offer libations (tarpayet) to the gods and Pitris, performing
;
ablutions at the three savanas.
Having consigned the three sacred tires (vaitanan) to his own person
(by swallowing the ashes) according to prescribed rules, let him remain
without tire, without habitation, feeding on roots and fruits, practising
Ed.
the vow of a muni (i. e. the mauna-vrata of perpetual silence).