འདལ་བ་གཞ intro.66
The Chapter on Going Forth; The Chapter on the Restoration Rite; The Chapter on Lifting Restrictions; The Chapter on the Rains; The Chapter on Medicines intro.66
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intro.66
First and foremost is the term pravrajyā, which in its widest application referred to the act of “going forth,” that is, renouncing the settled life of a householder to live as a wandering ascetic. In pre-Buddhist India, the act of going forth often took a ritual form and was made dramatically visible “by shaving off the hair and beard and laying aside the layman’s dress, to cover oneself with rags, with bark or hemp, or to wander in the nude.”⁴¹ In the present translation, we render pravrajyā (Tib. rab tu ’byung ba) as “to go forth” (or, in a small number of cases, “to join the renunciant order”) while one who goes forth (Tib. rab byung) is a “renunciant.”