The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.219

v1.c26.219

In one passage⁴ Strabo gives an account of the 'philosophers' drawn from some other source than Megasthenes. According to this source, the wise men were divided into Brāhmans and a class, described as 'argumentative and captious,' who laugh at the Brāhmans as charlatans and senseless, because the Brāhmans pursue the study of Nature and of the stars. The name given in our texts to this anti-Brāhman class is *Pramnai*. This should not be emended to *Sramnai*, as was once done, on the supposition that it represented *çramaṇa*⁵. The people intended are undoubtedly the *prāmāṇikas*, the followers of the various philosophical systems, each of which has its own view as to what constitutes *pramāṇa*, a 'means of right knowledge.' These philosophers are, as a rule, orthodox Brāhmans, but they view with contempt those Brāhmans who put their trust in Vedic ceremonies⁶. The Brāhmans themselves are divided by this source into (1) those who live in the mountains, (2) the naked ones, and (3) those who live in the world. The Mountain-dwellers dress in deer-skins and carry wallets full of roots and simples, making pretence to some art of healing by means of hocus-pocus and spells and charms. The Naked Ones live, as their name imports, without clothes, in the open air for the most part, practising endurance up to the age of thirty-seven. Women may live with them, bound to continence. These are the class most reverenced by the people. The third sort of Brāhmans, those who live in the world, are to be found in the towns or villages, dressed in robes of fine white linen, with the skins of deer or of gazelles hung from their shoulders. They wear beards and long hair which is twisted up and covered by a turban. It seems clear that those who are here described as the Mountain-dwellers correspond most nearly to the Sarmanes of Megasthenes.