History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c46.87

v3.c46.87

In the Gupta Inscriptions we have several records of a line of kings who were the feudatories of the imperial Guptas and who bear the appellation ‘nṛpati-parivrājaka’ (kingly ascetics). Fleet thinks (p. 95 n. 1) that the word means no more than what is conveyed by such words as ‘rājarṣi’, but this is unconvincing. Their gotra was Bharadvāja and the founder is said to have been an incarnation of Kapila (p. 115). It is likely that the founder, after being a king, ultimately became a sannyāsin and his descendants (in the fashion poetically described by Kālidāsa) also became ascetics after adorning the throne for some time. Hence they probably came to be called nṛpati-parivrājakas. It is interesting to note that Vyāsa quoted in Sm. M. (p. 176) and Yati-dh. (pp 2-3) forbade sannyāsa in the Kali age, though he made an exception to this extent that as long as the division of society into varṇas existed and as long as the Veda was studied so long sannyāsa could be resorted to in the Kali age.²¹⁸⁰ Nāgeśa in his Vrātyatāprāyaścitta-nirṇaya (p. 46) makes the curious statement that according to the Sannyāsa-paddhati of Vyāsa a wise brāhmaṇa should not resort to sannyāsa when 4400 years of the Kali age will have expired (i. e. after 1299 A. D.).²¹⁸¹ This dictum was probably due not only to the difficulties of observing to the letter the code of life sketched for sannyāsins, but also to the fact that about 1299, the whole of India was being harassed by Moslem invaders and adventurers who made the helpless sannyāsins the first target for their fanatic zeal and persecution. The Nirṇayasindhu (III, pūrvārdha, end) quotes the above verse of Vyāsa and remarks that this prohibition of sannyāsa is meant to apply to sannyāsa with three daṇḍas.