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NAKED PENITENTS
519
m
it nothing but impious pride, while others maintain
that he admired the writer's noble and philosophic courage.
And how. it may be asked, did these recluses obtain,
through penance, perfect wisdom and perfect purity ? The
answer is, by three means by the repression of their
animal passions, by meditation, and by the mortification
of the flesh and of all the senses ; in fact, by complete
self-abnegation.
By the first of these means they strove to destroy the
three strongest passions to which man is subject, namely,
and to free themselves com-
wealth, land, and women
pletely from all prejudices in respect of caste, rank, and
honours. They further aimed at the repression of the most
ordinary and natural impulses, even that of self-preserva-
tion.
They insisted on their disciples being insensible to
They called
cold or heat, wind or rain, pain or sickness.
this moksha-sadhaka or the practice of deliverance.
It may,
therefore, be said that in many respects they were greater
stoics than Zeno himself and greater cynics than Diogenes.
At the same time it is more than probable that the majority
of these VanaprastJias, while applauding these strict doc-
trines, left the practice of them to the more enthusiastic.
There are penitents professing the principles of moksha-
sadhaka even at the present day. Some of them go about
quite naked, the object of this indecent practice being to
convince the admiring public that they are no longer
susceptible to the temptations of lust. There is also a class
of religious mendicants, called Bairagis, to be met with
everywhere, who show themselves in public in a state of
:
;
,
nature
*.
The people evince the greatest admiration for these un-
clothed devotees, and express the utmost wonder as to how
they succeed in controlling a passion which is generally
regarded as beyond control. Some say that the Bairagis
owe this impotence to extreme sobriety in eating and
drinking, while others assert that it is the result of the use
As to their alleged sobriety it is a mere
Generally speaking, they eat all kinds of meat and
drink all kinds of intoxicating liquors without any shame,
of certain drugs.
fable.
1
This would
now
be punishable by law.
Ed.