The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.212

v1.c26.212

‘As to the Sarmanes, the most highly-honoured are called ‘Forest-dwellers’¹. They live in the forests on leaves and wild fruits, and wear clothes made of the bark of trees, abstaining from cohabitation and wine. The kings call them to their side, sending messengers to enquire of them about the causes of events, and use their mediation in worshipping and supplicating the gods. After the Forest-dwellers, the order of Sarmanes second in honour is the medical—philosophers, as it were, on the special subject of Man. These live sparely, not in the open air indeed, but on rice and meal, which every one of whom they beg and who shows them hospitality gives them. They know how by their simples to make marriages fertile and how to procure male children or female children, as may be desired. Their treatment is mainly by diet and not by medicines. And of medicines they attach greater value to those applied externally than to drugs. Other remedies, they say, are liable to do more harm than good. These too, like the Brāhmans, train themselves to endurance, both active and passive, so much so that they will maintain one posture without moving for the whole day. Other orders of Sarmanes are diviners and masters of incantations and those who are versed in the lore and the ritual concerning the dead, and go through the villages and towns, begging. Others again there are of a higher and finer sort, though even these will allow themselves to make use of popular ideas about hell, of those ideas at any rate which seem to make for godliness and purity of life. In the case of some Sarmanes, women also are permitted to share in the philosophic life, on the condition of observing sexual continence like the men.