Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.13
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.13
- Language
- German
c48.s1.13.1
§ 31. **Religious Devotees and Mendicants** (2,755,900): The abdication of worldly position and the relinquishment of all possessions and family ties, in order to pursue an undisturbed course of contemplation preparatory to quitting the present existence, is a proceeding which has been strongly attractive to the higher ranks of the Brāhmanic community almost from the post-Vedic organisation of society upon sacerdotal lines. Indeed, according to the strict theory of duty set forth in the treatises dealing with the Perfect Life, it is incumbent upon every Brāhman thus to break with his former ties as he feels old age creeping over him. Although this injunction is substantially inoperative, there are other considerations which tend to swell the ranks of religious devotees in modern India. Looking only at the lower side of the case, the vast number of popular saints and deities, some universal, others with only local renown, is in itself an inducement to many to earn their living by invoking a blessing in the name of one or other of these objects of veneration upon the households within the area of adoration, receiving in return a handful of meal and a pinch or two of condiments.
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Life is easily sustained in the tropics upon this frugal diet, whilst the climate affords opportunities for a pleasant nomadic existence, which, if extended as it often is, to the visitation of the chief centres of pilgrimage, brings these classes into contact with their co-religionists from all parts of the country. It is no matter for surprise, therefore, that about one in a hundred of the population has thus taken to the road, leaving little room, accordingly, for the lay mendicant, outside the ranks of the maimed, the halt, the blind and the leper. But whilst the lower grades of the profession are laxly recruited and the members thereof take their calling very lightly, there is in all the principal orders a body formally initiated and put through a course of instruction in certain tenets of doctrine and morality which they are in turn sent forth to inculcate upon the community at large. Most of the great orders originated in the South of India. Some are said to have been instituted by the celebrated S'aiva reformer, S'aṅkarācārya, but most attribute their creation to his successor, Rāmānuja. On reaching upper India, however, their constitution and practice were altered by Rāmānanda and Caitanya, who mitigated to a considerable extent the exclusiveness of their recruitment and the austerity of their regulations. The object which these bodies were originally formed to promote was the extirpation of Buddhism, a task begun by the great leaders of the Brāhmanical revival.
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Confined at first to the Brāhman and Kṣatriya, or Rājput, the orders began, in due course, to open their ranks to members of other castes, and then split up into two sections, the celibate, or ascetic, and the domestic. The orders which admitted the lower castes too, were soon subdivided into the exclusive and the catholic branches, as in the case of the Vaiṣṇava of Bengal, part of whom came under the levelling influence of Caitanya. The branch which takes to family life forms separate endogamous communities, and judging from the number of women returned under the various titles, excluding certain castes which bear a name also borne by non-ascetic bodies, such subdivisions appear to be in the majority, for there are in the aggregate 90 women to every 100 men. In Bengal, indeed, the former are in excess, as they are in the population at large in that province. In upper India, however, there are many large establishments of the nature of monasteries which supply the bulk of the higher grades of itinerant teachers. Even in these, however, the functions of the fraternity are not restricted to religion, for some of the Mahantas, or Abbots, as they have been called, have been noted money-lenders on the strength of the funds and endowments of their charge.
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In former days, too, bodies of these devotees used to be formed into irregular forces, which exhibited in action the same fanatical ferocity as is now associated with the Muslim Ghāzi and in the middle of last century with the Sikh Akālī. A remnant of one of these bands still survives, it is said, in the Dādūpanthī Nāgā of the State of Jaipur in Rājputāna, a country associated to some extent with the expansion of the ascetic movement. It is not proposed to enter here into the doctrinal differences between the various fraternities further than to mention that there is the usual main division of the principal bodies into S'aiva and Vaiṣṇava, with many subdivisions, the latter school being the more modern. Nor, again, is it necessary to set forth in detail the sections of the orders, since being recruited from all classes of the population, regardless of caste or race, they are of no ethnographic importance, and under each head are included members of the Sikh, Jain and Muslim creeds along with those of orthodox Brāhmanism. It is impossible, indeed, to state accurately the numbers falling under each head, owing to the loose way in which the principal designations are applied. Under the title of Fakir, for instance, which is specially applicable to Muslim devotees, nearly 450,000 Brāhmanists and Sikhs are returned. The Atīt, again, a general title, are given as identical with Gosāvī or Sannyāsī as well as under their own heading.
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Vairāgī or Bairāgī covers not only the Vaiṣṇava and some of the Daṇḍāsi, but also most of those returning themselves as Bhāva or Sādhu, terms used of Brāhmanic devotees in general. Still more misleading is the return under Jōgī, an order differing from the rest in its origin, and conjecturally not called into existence to combat schism, but itself a heretical order, proscribed by the orthodox, probably on account of its then Jain or Buddhist proclivities. It is shown in combination with the Jugi, a class of coarse-cotton weavers in eastern Bengal and Assam, reputed to have come from the south-west, but undoubtedly taking its rise from some religious organisation of the lower classes, and now said to be "assuming the sacred thread en masse", and contesting its right to wear it against the local Brāhmanity. In upper India, the Jōgī or Yōgi community is divided into those who have a right to the title by profession and initiation and others who have assumed it for the convenience of their calling. The former, of whom there are two main subdivisions, have their monasteries and settled organisation, the latter who are returned in the Panjāb, Rājputāna and Gujarāt under the name also of Rāval, trade upon the reputation the other Jōgī have acquired for obtaining supernatural powers of divination by dint of contemplation and mental abstraction;
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consequently, "any rascally beggar who pretends to be able to tell fortunes or to practice astrological or necromantic arts in however small a degree, buys a drum and calls himself a Jōgī". The 43,000 Muslim returned as Jōgī in the Panjāb and its neighbourhood are thus accounted for. Considering the Dravidian origin of most of the ascetic orders and the traces of the South still preserved in their customs and nomenclature, it is remarkable that hardly any are now found in that part of India, and those chiefly of the lower class. Even the mendicants who there ply their trade in the name of religion hold no reputable position in the community. This is perhaps attributable to the fact that though the genesis of the great orders took place in the south, it was in the north that the need of their propagandist efforts was most pressing.