Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.13.2

c48.s1.13.2

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.