The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c9.12

c9.12

In the later classical Sanskrit poetry, many imitations of these old stories are found, among other places, in the Raghuvamśa when it is said of Raghu that “withdrawing his heart from the sensuous world he gave the young son as a token of kingly dignity the white umbrella and went with the queen to the shades of the trees of the ascetic’s forest: This was what the custom of the Ikshvâku family demanded when a man’s youth was over” (III. 70). “For,” so it is said in another place (VIII. 11), “the descendants of Dilîpa led in their old age, after handing over the reins of government to their virtuous sons, through extreme self-discipline the life of an ascetic, clad in the bark of trees.”