History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.71

v7.c96.s1.71

The stage of sannyāsa or yati was highly honoured, because it was deemed to lead to mokṣa. The result was that many persons quite unfit to lead the life prescribed for a real sannyāsin only entered the order and possessed all the outward signs of that stage such as wearing ochre-coloured garments, shaving the head, carrying three staffs and a water jar. They are condemned in the Mahābhārata, Śāntiparva 308. 47 (cr. ed. = 320. 47 Ch. ed.) quoted in H. of Dh. Vol. II p. 936 n 2151b and above p. 1369 n 2241). Yāj. III. 58 provides that the sannyāsin should be good to all beings, quiescent, have three daṇḍas and a water jar and should enter a village for begging alms. Some interpreted the word *tridaṇḍī* as meaning 'carrying three staffs', while others like Manu XII. 10 and Dakṣa VII. 30 provide that a person is called tridaṇḍī who observes threefold restraint, viz of speech, mind and body. The sannyāsin was so highly esteemed that for deciding doubtful points of dharma a single ascetic was allowed to do the work of a pariṣad and declare the proper decision (vide H. of Dh. Vol. II p. 969) Similarly, great emphasis was laid on inviting a Yati at a śrāddha dinner (vide H. of Dh. Vol. IV pp. 388, 399). The Bṛhaj-jātaka (chapter 15) deals with the question about the horoscopic indications for different kinds of ascetics being born on the conjunction of four or more powerful planets in the same sign of the zodiac in the horoscope and adds that according as Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, the Moon, Venus, Saturn, or the Sun is the most powerful of the four or more planets in one sign in a horoscope, the person whose nativity it is becomes respectively an ascetic of the types of Bauddha, Ājīvika,²⁶²⁴ a bhikṣu (i. e. vedic ascetic), Vṛddha (a Kāpālika), a *caraka*, a nirgrantha (a Jain ascetic) or one subsisting on forest produce, fruits, roots &c.²⁶²⁵ This shows that long before Varāhamihira (6th century A. D) so many kinds of ascetics flourished or were common in India.