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Samnyasa Upanishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s3: 3. The Nature and Purpose of Renunciation

Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s3

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3. The Nature and Purpose of Renunciation

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In examining the contents of the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads, the first, and possibly the most significant, issue I want to explore is the Brāhmaṇical self-understanding of the meaning and nature of renunciation. What is the purpose of renunciation? What theological definition of a renouncer's status does the Brāhmaṇical tradition provide? How does that definition affect other significant elements of the Brāhmaṇical religious world? The Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads do not deal with these issues explicitly. A well-developed theology of renunciation, however, underlies their discussions of such central issues as the rite of renunciation and the rules governing a renouncer's life. It is this theology that I want to explore in this section, drawing on information provided by these and other Brāhmaṇical texts.

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A point that we need to bear in mind as we explore the Brāhmaṇical theology of renunciation, however, is that the very institution of renunciation as a single entity was the creation of that same theology (Sprockhoff 1976, 288–295). There were many life-styles and institutions of holiness, old age, and separation from society in ancient India. Evidence of these institutions is found in the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves. The *Laghu-Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣad*, for example, contains a rite for withdrawal from society in the case of a person who recovers from a life-threatening illness. Such a withdrawal was probably connected with the rite in extremis described in several major Upaniṣads.¹ Within Brāhmaṇism many of these institutions were conflated into the single yet complex institution of renunciation. It is this theologically constituted institution that is referred to in the Brāhmaṇical literature by the technical term *saṃnyāsa*, literally meaning "discarding" or "abandonment."

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¹ On this rite, called *saṃpradāna* or *saṃpratti*, see Sprockhoff 1976, 52–66; 1979, 386–398; 1987.

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The term *saṃnyāsa*, as I have explained in detail elsewhere (Olivelle 1981), is a rather new term in the Sanskrit vocabulary. It is absent not only in the ancient Vedic texts but also in the Buddhist and Jain vocabularies. The term is not only new, but its usage is strictly limited to the Brāhmaṇical tradition. It is a mistake, therefore, to assume that the term *saṃnyāsa*, common as it may be in medieval and modern India, was ever a generic term for the way of life of wandering mendicants.

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In its earliest usage, moreover, the term referred specifically to a single aspect of that life, namely the abandonment of ritual activity, which, as we shall presently see, became the central and defining characteristic of Brāhmaṇical renunciation. In its early usage the object of *saṃnyāsa* is often explicitly stated, and it is invariably rites. The term is, by extension, applied to the ritual process (see below 4.2–4) by which rites are abandoned and occurs in the central element of that process, the ritual formula of renunciation (see below 4.4). The very semantic history of the term most commonly used to designate Brāhmaṇical renunciation, therefore, points to the centrality of the ritual and its abandonment in the Brāhmaṇical understanding of renunciation.

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The general framework and the basic categories of Brāhmaṇical theology were ritual. As the ritual is at the center of Brāhmaṇical religion and theology, so the absence of the ritual, as the semantic history of the term *saṃnyāsa* points out, becomes the central element of the Brāhmaṇical theology and practice of renunciation. At the same time, however, renunciation as such and several elements of a renouncer's life are viewed by the same theology as the fulfillment and perfection of the ritual and as producing powerful ritual effects both in the renouncer and in those related to him. This paradoxical and often ambivalent attitude toward renunciation underlies many of the discussions of renunciation we will encounter in these Upaniṣads.

3.1 Renunciation as a Non-Ritual State

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The basic assumption of most Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads is that renunciation essentially consists in the abandonment of ritual activities; renunciation is a non-ritual state. The *Āruṇi*, one of the oldest of these Upaniṣads, opens with Āruṇi's question to Prajāpati: "By what means, O Lord, can I give up rites completely?" The answer to this question lies in the procedure of renunciation: one can eliminate the need for rites and assume a non-ritual state only by going through the proper ritual process for abandoning rites.

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Both this question and the elements of the renunciatory rite that we will presently examine presuppose that the person who intends to renounce is the typical Brahmin adult: that is, a man who is married, who maintains the sacred fires, and who offers regular sacrifices.² Indeed, it is the fundamentally ritual nature of the Brāhmaṇical religion that gives significance to the definition of renunciation as a non-ritual state. To renounce rites, therefore, has significance only for a person who is qualified and obliged to perform rites.³

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² There are, of course, exceptions. People who are unmarried and even uninitiated, for example, are allowed to renounce if they are completely detached from the world (JU 64). The ideal-typical candidate for renunciation, however, is the married householder.

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³ This is one reason why Brāhmaṇical renunciation disregards those who are not qualified to perform Vedic rites, such as Śūdras, women, and people with moral and physical disabilities (see below 4.1). There is, after all, no meaning or purpose in giving up what one is not entitled to or does not possess.

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Thus the foundation of Brāhmaṇical renunciation is the belief that at some point in an individual’s life the ritual religion can and must be transcended. This belief is based on the common Upaniṣadic doctrine systematically developed in the monistic theology of Advaita Vedānta, a theology that most of the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads subscribe to, that rites operate within and promote *saṃsāra*, the life bound to repeated births and deaths, and that the renunciation of rites is a necessary precondition for the acquisition of the liberating knowledge.⁴ The *Bṛhat-Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣad* (272) puts it bluntly:

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⁴ For a detailed discussion of this point, see Śaṃkara’s commentary on the BāU 3.5.1, translated in Olivelle 1986.

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People are bound by rites and liberated by knowledge. Wise ascetics, therefore, do not perform rites.

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The Sanskrit word for rite is *karma*. This term, which literally means “action,” can and often does have a meaning broader than rite; it may refer to the entire spectrum of moral, physical, and mental activities of human beings. *Karma* is also a well-known concept in Indian speculations regarding the rebirth process. In that context it refers to the result or residue of human actions that determines an individual’s future lives; it is thus a central concept of Indian ethics. Within the Brāhmaṇical tradition, however, the most common, the most basic, and the most significant dimension of *karma* is the ritual act. We have seen that in Brāhmaṇical theology, rites are the most powerful and the most efficacious actions human beings can perform. They have the power to produce effects after the death of the performer; hence the oft-repeated saying that a person desirous of heaven should offer a sacrifice (see below 3.2).

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When translated into the theology of *saṃsāra*, however, ritual acts, because of their very power and efficacy, become the principal *karma* that causes the continuation of the rebirth process.⁵ Within the Brāhmaṇical theology of renunciation, consequently, the elimination of *karma* means principally the elimination of rites.

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⁵ The concept of rite within the Brāhmaṇical context, however, comprehends a much broader spectrum of human actions than the English term rite (see below n. 11). The ritual dimension of the concept and law of *karma* is often overlooked by scholars. Indeed, the very automatic nature of that law closely resembles the operation of ritual acts. See W. Halbfass, "Karma, *Apūrva*, and 'Natural' Causes: *Observations on the Growth and Limits of the Theory of Saṃsāra*," in *Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions*, ed. W. D. O'Flaherty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 268–302; Herman W. Tull, *The Vedic Origins of Karma: Cosmos as Man in Ancient Indian Myth and Ritual* (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989).

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What a Brahmin renounces, therefore, is *karma*, not just any action but ritual actions. The *Nāradaparivrājaka* makes this point clear:

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Bathing, muttering prayers, divine worship, sacrifices, propitiatory rites, and rites such as the fire sacrifice do not apply to him, O Nārada, in this world.
Neither do divine praise, rites for ancestors, pilgrimages, vows, categories such as right (*dharma*) and wrong (*adharma*), injunctions, and temporal activities.
He shall abandon all rites and every worldly custom. (NpU 197)

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Consequently, the central elements of the rite of renunciation, as we shall see below (4.2–3), consist in the abandonment of key elements of the ritual life: sacred fires, fire drills, sacrificial implements, sacrificial string, topknot, and mantras. The lack of a sacred fire in particular is the hallmark of a renouncer. As the presence of a sacred fire in a home signals the householder's allegiance to the ritual religion of society, so its absence represents the most telling symbol of a renouncer's separation from that religion. He is called "a fireless man" (*anagni*), and his fireless condition is permanent. "Having renounced the fires," one text declares, "let him not bring them back" (KśU 40; LSU 20). The fire drills that were used formerly to light the sacred fire, as well as the wooden sacrificial utensils such as spoons, cups, and pots, are burnt. Metal implements are given away. The sacrificial string is cut and discarded. The topknot is plucked out. A renouncer is expected to avoid every article or symbol associated with ritual activities.

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The non-ritual state of a renouncer underlies the prohibition against uttering *svāhā* or *svadhā*, the two exclamations that accompany offerings to gods and ancestors, respectively, and against invitation and dismissal—a reference to the formal invitation addressed to gods or ancestors just prior to an offering and to their dismissal at its conclusion.⁶

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⁶ PhU 50–51; NpU 149, 153.

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Renouncers similarly give up the use of mantras, the ritual formulae that must accompany ritual offerings. The connection between rite and mantra is invariable; the one cannot exist without the other (NpU 137–138). The *Āruṇi* (ĀrU 6) puts it plainly: “‘Thereafter [namely, after renunciation] let him function without mantras.’”⁷ The abandonment of mantras is performed during the rite of renunciation. The *Gāyatrī* (ĀrU 6, n. 4), which is the most sacred mantra of Brāhmaṇism and the first mantra to be imparted to a boy at his initiation, is formally abandoned.⁸ The only mantra a renouncer recites is the sacred syllable OM, which is regarded as the audible manifestation of Brahman.

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⁷ See also TaU 242.

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⁸ See ĀrU 6; NpU 151, 166.

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A medieval text gives the following formal definition of renunciation (*saṃnyāsa*): “Renunciation is the abandonment of rites known through injunctions—the *śrauta* and *smārta*, the permanent, occasional and optional—after reciting the Call (*praiṣa*).”⁹

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⁹ *tatra saṃnyāso nāma vidhito gṛhītānāṃ nityanaimittikakāmyasmārtakarmaṇāṃ praiṣamantraṃ samuccārya parityāgaḥ*. Ypra 1.2. *Śrauta* rites are those prescribed in the Vedas, while the *smārta* are those given in the *smṛtis*. For a discussion of this definition, see Olivelle 1975.

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Even though renunciation is thus defined as a negative state, as the abandonment of every type of ritual activity, the fact remains that renouncers continue to perform some actions. They are subject to rules and regulations, that is, they are subject to their particular *dharma*. Following the rules of their *dharma*, they perform activities distinctive to their state, such as begging, wearing particular types of clothes or no clothes at all, carrying a begging bowl, bearing a staff, and the like. Aren’t these ritual actions? The hermeneutical principles used by medieval exegetes who answered such objections are instructive and point to the special status that renunciation occupies among the Brāhmaṇical institutions.¹⁰

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¹⁰ For an analysis of the hermeneutical principles involved in the definition of renunciation, see Olivelle 1975.

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From the viewpoint of Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics, rites (*karma*) are defined as actions that are enjoined by positive injunctions (*vidhi*) found either in the Vedas or in the *smṛtis*.¹¹ If renunciation is defined as the abandonment or the non-performance of rites, then the renunciatory mode of life cannot be the object of any positive injunction. Further, because the abandonment of prescribed rites can be legitimate only if their abandonment is scripturally authorized, renunciation must be the subject of negative injunctions, namely prohibitions (*niṣedha*). Renouncers, therefore, do not perform rites because they are forbidden to do so.

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¹¹ It is important to note that *karma* is defined as an action that is prompted by an injunction. Thus *karma* covers a broader spectrum of actions than its English counterpart *rite*. Actions such as brushing the teeth, bathing, eating, begging, wearing a particular garment, carrying a staff, and sleeping in a particular way are ritual actions within Brāhmaṇical theology. The abandonment of *karma* by renouncers, therefore, should theoretically refer to all these types of activity.

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According to the Brāhmaṇical hermeneutical tradition, the entire edifice of proper conduct (*dharma*) is founded on injunctions (that is, positive actions enjoined on a particular group of people) and on prohibitions (that is, actions that a group should avoid or abandon). Injunctive texts are called *pravṛttiśāstra* (texts promoting action), and prohibitive texts are called *nivṛttiśāstra* (texts promoting non-action). If renunciation is defined as a non-ritual state, then only the latter class of texts would apply to renouncers.

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Yet renouncers continue to perform certain distinctive actions. Kuṭīcakas, for example, wear sacrificial strings and carry triple staffs. Paramahaṃsas carry begging bowls. Some renouncers are expected to shave their heads at prescribed times. All are expected to beg their food daily at the proper time and according to prescribed rules. All these actions are performed legitimately by renouncers because they are the subject of clear and positive injunctions. The problem for the Brāhmaṇical theologians is this: if renunciation is a negative state, how can these positive injunctions apply to renouncers, and how is it legitimate for renouncers to perform rites enjoined by those injunctions?

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The answer has two steps and applies rules of interpretation developed within the school of Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics (*mīmāṃsā*). The first step is based on the distinction between two types of injunctions: general (*utsarga*) and specific (*apavāda* or *niyama*). The second considers all positive rules governing a renouncer’s life as belonging to a particular class of injunctions called “exclusive specification” (*parisaṃkhyā*).

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That renouncers should cease performing ritual acts is a general prohibition (*utsarga*). It is this general prohibition that *defines* their renunciatory status; they are renouncers because they fall under this general prohibition and, consequently, abandon ritual activities. The specific actions performed by some renouncers are the subject of “specific injunctions” (*niyama*). It is a common principle of Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics that specific injunctions have greater force than and, therefore, set aside the provisions of general injunctions.¹² The argument is that the ritual acts that some renouncers continue to perform are exceptions to the general rule. The question then is how such exceptions are possible without violating the very definition of renunciation as a non-ritual state.

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¹² This principle is frequently formulated in the maxim “An exception has greater force than the rule” (*utsargāpavādo balīyān*). See *Mīmāṃsākośa*, 2:1110; Olivelle 1977, 1.14n, 1.16n.

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This is where the second step in the argument comes in. The specific rules that form these exceptions belong to a special category of injunctions known as “exclusive specification” (*parisaṃkhyā*). Such an injunction has a positive form but contains a negative prescription; that is, the injunction is in reality a prohibition. A medieval exegetical text defines such an injunction thus: "When both alternatives are simultaneously established, an injunction that aims at excluding one is an injunction of exclusive specification."¹³ The classical example of such an injunction is the following: "The five five-nailed animals are to be eaten."¹⁴ Within the context of this injunction, there are two alternatives regarding the eating of these animals: one may eat the five mentioned animals and/or animals other than those five. Both alternatives are established by the natural appetite and inclination of people, who tend to eat the flesh of all sorts of animals with five nails or toes. Now, the injunction in specifying the five five-nailed animals that are to be eaten excludes the eating of five-nailed animals other than these five. The injunction, therefore, actually amounts to a prohibition against eating the flesh of animals other than those specifically mentioned. The injunction, furthermore, does not enjoin people to eat the five types of animals; it only says that if people want to eat meat they may eat the meat of only these animals. Thus a person can decide not to eat meat at all, including the meat of these five animals, without violating this injunction.

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¹³ *ubhayasya yugapat prāptāv itaravyāvṛttiparo vidhiḥ parisaṁkhāvidhiḥ.* Āpadeva, *Mīmāṁsānyāyaprakāśa*, ed. and trans. F. Edgerton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), 244. See also HDh 2:1229.

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¹⁴ *pañca pañcanakhā bhakṣyāḥ.* MBh 12.139.66; ĀpDh 1.5.17.37; VDh 14.39; MDh 5.17–18. The five are porcupine, hedgehog, hare, tortoise, and iguana.

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Interpreted as exclusive specifications, the rules regarding the behavior of renouncers do not require renouncers to perform any specific action. They simply specify a particular way of acting if a renouncer undertakes that type of activity. The rule on begging, for example, excludes all methods of obtaining food except begging; thus, if a renouncer wants to eat, this rule forces him to obtain his food only by begging. He may, however, decide not to eat at all, in which case he is not required to beg. Such a decision will not violate the rule on begging. Insofar as they are exclusive specifications, therefore, the positive rules concerning renouncers and the positive actions that some renouncers perform on the basis of those rules do not constitute their renunciatory status. These actions are merely incidental. The essence of renunciation is constituted by the abandonment of ritual acts and not by the few rituals acts that renouncers may continue to perform.

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Within the context of the above discussion, the ideological distinction between renouncers and other groups within the Brāhmaṇical world is striking. Brāhmaṇical theology defines a group, whether it be based on caste, sex, or religious practice, as constituted by its own particular *dharma* (*svadharma*) that results in duties, rights, and practices peculiar to that group. It is the *dharma* that defines a group. The particular *dharma* of a group is embodied in specific and positive injunctions that people belonging to that group are expected to follow and that define their peculiar status. A householder—that is, a person belonging to the householder's order of life (*āśrama*)—is defined, for example, by the performance of actions peculiar to that state, such as procreation and sacrifice. The exception is the renouncer, who is defined by what he has given up rather than by what he does. Technically, his *dharma* consists of prohibitions (*nivṛttiśāstra*) rather than injunctions. There is, indeed, no practice that is obligatory on a renouncer, because all injunctions that apply to him are exclusive specifications.

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These scholastic explanations of activities that are distinctive to renouncers underscore the unique theological position of renunciation within the Brāhmaṇical tradition. It is the only non-ritual state recognized within a fundamentally ritual ideology.

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The householder and the renouncer represent the two major types of Brāhmaṇical religiosity. Their distinction is based on the role of ritual in their lives: performance of rites and the absence of rites are their respective distinguishing characteristics, their peculiar *dharma*. The *Nāradaparivrājaka* (196) makes the same point negatively:

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These two shall not attain eminence because their actions are inconsistent with their states: a householder who abstains from rites and a mendicant who engages in them.

3.2 Renunciation as the Perfection of the Ritual

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The thoroughly ritual framework of the Brāhmaṇical world and of Brāhmaṇical thought inevitably led to the employment of ritual categories in developing the theology of renunciation. In a negative way, that employment is evident in the very conception of renunciation as a non-ritual state. More positively, however, aspects of the renouncer’s life came to be viewed not merely as the abandonment of rites but as their perfection, and the very rite of renunciation was believed to produce powerful ritual results for the renouncer and for those related to him.

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The non-ritual state of renunciation, first of all, is often depicted as the ultimate perfection of the ritual. Within this context, the abandonment of rites and ritual accessories, as we shall see, is regarded as a process of internalization. The abandoned fires, for example, are carried internally in the form of the breaths or the internal fire responsible for digestion. Whatever a renouncer eats, therefore, becomes a sacrifice offered in the internal fires.¹⁵ The following passage of the *Kaṭhaśruti* illustrates the ritual perfection achieved by a person in the non-ritual state:

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¹⁵ On the Brāhmaṇical ritual of *Prāṇāgnihotra* (“fire oblation in the breaths”) and its relationship to the renouncer’s offering in the breaths, see Bodewitz 1973.

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What he eats in the evening becomes his evening sacrifice. What he eats in the morning becomes his morning sacrifice. What he eats on the new moon becomes his new moon sacrifice. What he eats on the full moon becomes his full moon sacrifice. When in the spring he shaves his head, his beard, and the hair of his body, and pares his nails, that constitutes his *Agniṣṭoma* sacrifice. (KśU 39)

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The internalized ritual is more permanent and more sublime. The renouncer’s internal fires are permanently lit; he kindles them with every breath. His eating becomes a sacrificial offering. His body and bodily functions are transformed into a long sacrificial session. The renouncer's body thus becomes a sacred object; it is equal to the fire altar where the Vedic rites are performed.¹⁶

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¹⁶ This religious construction of the body contrasts sharply with another cultural construction of the human body in Indian asceticism that we shall presently examine (3.4), where the body is viewed as full of filth and equal to a corpse. The sacred nature of a renouncer's body, however, is expressed in the belief that it is a visible image of god: "There are two forms of Vāsudeva: the mobile and the immobile. The mobile form is the renouncer; the immobile consists of images" (Ypra 3.15–16). Other texts also highlight the analogy between an idol and a renouncer: "A fast purifies a person who fails to pay homage when he sees an image of a god or a triple-staffed renouncer" (Ypra 70.3–4). "In whosesoever house a renouncer eats, in his house eats Hari [Viṣṇu] himself" (Ypra 70.8). See Raymond B. Williams, "The Holy Man as the Abode of God in the Swaminarayan Religion," in *Gods of Flesh/Gods of Stone: The Embodiment of Divinity in India*, ed. Joanne Punzo Waghorne et al. (Chambersburg, Pa.: Anima Publications, 1985), 143–157.

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A renouncer who abandons the external string and topknot but wears the internal string of knowledge is the perfect Brahmin (see below 4.3). The perfection of the Brahmin state is achieved through the perfection of the ritual, and the perfection of the ritual requires that the external performance be replaced by internal detachment and knowledge. The very act of renunciation is a great act of ritual sacrifice by which a man achieves greatness both in asceticism and in ritual:

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Having deposited the sacred fires in himself, an ascetic who offers the entire phenomenal world in the fire of knowledge is a great ascetic and a true fire-sacrificer. (BSU 272)

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I have already had occasion to refer to Heesterman's (1964) provocative essay, "Brahmin, Ritual and Renouncer," in which he argues that the renouncer ideology that considers the renouncer's non-ritual state as the perfection of the ritual is an orthogenetic and logical development of the ritual ideology that gave rise to the classical Vedic sacrificial system. According to Heesterman, the preclassical sacrifice of ancient India was based on an ideology of complementarity and mutual dependence between the sacrificial patron and the officiating priests. The priests, by accepting gifts and food, take upon themselves the death and impurity of the patron; and the patron is reborn ritually through the sacrifice. The classical sacrificial ideology eliminates this interdependence; the sacrificial patron becomes the sacrificer (*yajamāna*) whose rebirth is assured by the efficacy of the sacrificial act itself. The patron and the officiants are no longer rivals; they are fused into a single ritual unit. Heesterman sees this individualization of the ritual, where dependence on others is replaced by the independent efficacy of the ritual act, as the precursor of renunciation, in which the individualization is made so complete that the renouncer becomes totally independent, independent even of priests and the external act of sacrifice:

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The development of brahminical theory, set off by the individualization of the ritual, did not stop at the point where the host-guest, protagonist-antagonist complementarity was fused into the single unit of yajamāna [sacrificer] and officiants. It has to advance to its logical conclusion, that is the interiorization of the ritual which makes the officiants' services superfluous. . . . It would seem to me that here we touch the principle of world-renunciation, the emergence of which has been of crucial importance in the development of Indian religious thinking. (Heesterman 1964, 22–23)
The point I want to stress is that the institution of renunciation is already implied in classical ritual thinking. The difference between classical ritualism and renunciation seems to be a matter rather of degree than of principle. The principle is the individualization of the ritual which could not but lead to its interiorization. (Heesterman 1964, 27)

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As I have observed above, Heesterman's theory depends too heavily on the development of ideas to be applicable without modifications to the history of the institution of renunciation, which transcends the boundaries of Brāhmaṇism. In examining the origin and development of the institution (as opposed to the ideology) of renunciation, we need to take into account social, economic, and political factors, as well as the impact of rival ideologies and the growing ethnic diversity in ancient India. Heesterman's theory, however, highlights significant aspects of the Brāhmaṇical appropriation of renunciation and the ways in which Brāhmaṇical theology understood and explained the status of a renouncer. It is in this appropriation that we notice strong continuities between the theologies of sacrifice and renunciation.

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All Indian renouncers, both within and outside the Brāhmaṇical tradition, gave up ritual activities. They refused to use fire. It is only within the Brāhmaṇical tradition, however, that the renouncer's abandonment of fire and rites became the focal point for the theology of renunciation. This theology considers the abandonment as the internalization and, therefore, the perfection of ritual life. The renouncer is totally independent—independent of the officiants and of the external acts—because his very act of existence is transformed into a perfect and internal sacrifice. The Brāhmaṇical theology of renunciation—and this is the significant point of Heesterman's analysis—is a direct and logical development of the Brāhmaṇical theology of the sacrifice.

3.3 The Ritual Effects of Renunciation

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Not only was renunciation regarded as the perfection of the ritual, it also produced powerful ritual effects. Renunciation was thought to produce automatic effects, just like a ritual.¹⁷ Renunciation, for example, was believed to erase the renouncer's sins, produce heavenly rewards for his relatives, and dissolve the bonds of marriage. The construction of many of these ritual effects of renunciation was clearly the result of the renouncers' difficult and ambivalent relationships to their families.

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¹⁷ For the legal effects of renunciation, including the dissolution of marriage and the abolition of all rights to ancestral property, see Olivelle 1984, 140–149. Undoubtedly, many of these legal effects have a ritual basis.

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The ritual bond between parents and children, and more generally between preceding and succeeding generations of a family, was a key element of the Brāhmaṇical world. We have already seen that the obligation to marry, to procreate children, and thus to continue the family line, is a central theme in Vedic theology. Celibacy, on the other hand, was a key element of renunciation. The tension between these two opposing values is reflected in most Brāhmaṇical discussions of domesticity and renunciation.

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In spite of the doctrine of *karma* that established the moral autonomy of individuals and placed on their shoulders the sole responsibility for their condition after death, the necessity of male descendants to assure a person's happiness after death through ritual offerings remained a significant element of the Brāhmaṇical ideology of death. This belief finds expression in the funeral rites, at which the doctrines of *karma* and rebirth are significantly absent, and in the offerings to deceased ancestors (*śrāddha*). A son through his ritual offerings was believed to assure a happy existence for his deceased parents and ancestors.

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The celibate and non-ritual state of a renouncer consequently was perceived as a threat to the Brāhmaṇical world. The classical formulation of the *āśrama* system, as we have seen, mitigated this conflict by postponing renunciation until retirement from family responsibilities. Payment of the three debts was made a condition for renouncing. The *Nāradaparivrājaka* (NpU 140), citing Manu (MDh 6.94), says:

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Having observed steadfastly the tenfold Law and having duly studied the Vedāntas, let a Brahmin renounce when he is freed from his debts.

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Brāhmaṇical theology sought to lessen the conflict between familial duties and the celibate way of life also by developing theories regarding the ritual benefits that accrue to his relatives when a man takes to renunciation. One text declares:

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The wise man who says: "I have renounced," rescues sixty generations of kin who have gone before him and sixty generations who will come after him. (BSU 251)

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Far from being a threat to the welfare of the family, renunciation, according to this theory, directly benefits the relatives of a renouncer. The *Śāṭyāyanīya* says that a renouncer “rescues from this existence his forefathers, relatives by marriage, blood relations, companions, and friends” (ŚU 331), and cites what it calls Vedic verses in support of this statement:

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One hundred prior generations as well as 300 subsequent generations attain the world of the virtuous when a wise man of their lineage takes to renunciation in this world.
A virtuous renouncer rescues thirty (generations) immediately before him, thirty beyond those, and thirty after him: so, indeed, the Vedas declare. (ŚU 331)

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The theory of the ritual effects of renunciation facilitated the forging of bonds between renouncers and the world that they had renounced. These ritual effects gave renunciation a social significance. Scholars have become increasingly aware of the strong ties that continued to bind Indian renouncers of all sects to those who were closest to them in society, in particular to their parents and children.¹⁸ The image of a renouncer totally divorced from and unconcerned about ordinary people and about his relatives is purely a theological (and perhaps scholarly) figment.

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¹⁸ Schopen has demonstrated how inscriptions on votive offerings made by Buddhist monks and nuns show their continued concern for the welfare of their parents: Gregory Schopen, “Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: A Question of ‘Sinicization’ Viewed from the Other Side,” *T’oung Pao* 70 (1984): 110–126; “Two Problems in the History of Indian Buddhism: The Layman/Monk Distinction and the Doctrines of the Transference of Merit,” *Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik* 10 (1985): 9–47.

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Renunciation was also believed to have ritual effects on the renouncer himself. His former sins, for example, are effaced, and he regains complete purity through the rite of renunciation.

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The fire of the Call [MU 116, n. 15] will burn up all faults, both the congenital and the corporal, as chaff-fire gold. (BSU 252)

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The custom of renouncing when a person was at the point of death (*āturasaṃnyāsa*)¹⁹ also may have resulted from the belief in similar ritual effects of renunciation. Clearly the purpose of such a renunciation was not the adoption of an ascetic life aimed at liberation. The *Śāṭyāyanīya* (331–332) gives one reason:

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¹⁹ See JU 68–69; NpU 137–138, 162, 173, 177; ŚU 331–332.

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A man who utters: "I have renounced," even while breathing his last, rescues his forefathers: so the Vedas teach.

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To a person who renounces at the point of death, the *Nāradaparivrājaka* (177) assures a birth in a pleasant world.

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Other medieval texts mention a ritual effect not recorded in our Upaniṣads: renunciation eliminates the period of impurity that follows the death of an ordinary person. During this time the deceased exists in the condition of a ghost (*preta*). The rite of renunciation, even the mere pronunciation of the Call: "I have renounced," at the time of death, abolishes this state.²⁰ The deceased renouncer becomes a forefather (*pitṛ*) immediately upon death. The normal funerary ritual (*sapiṇḍīkaraṇa*) aimed at leading the newly departed from the ghostly state to the world of the fathers is not performed for a dead renouncer (Ypra 71.12–20, 52–53).

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²⁰ See Ypra 4.80, 93; 20.14.

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As renunciation has ritual effects, so does the fall from renunciation. Apostates and their children become outcastes, they are not allowed to become renouncers, and, according to many legal texts, they are reduced to slavery.²¹ The *Śāṭyāyanīya* (329–330) says that the sin of apostasy is as great as all the mortal sins combined. It is even greater than them, because there is no expiation for it:

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²¹ On the legal effects of apostasy, see Olivelle 1984, 149–151; Y. Krishnan, "Was It Permissible for a *Saṃnyāsī* (Monk) to Revert to Lay Life?" *Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute* 50 (1969): 79–89. On apostasy, see BSU 250–251; ŚU 329–330.

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A thief, one who drinks liquor, a violator of his teacher's bed, and a treacherous friend—these become purified through expia-

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tions. But he who bears the manifest or the unmanifest emblem of Viṣṇu and then abandons it, is not purified by all the lustre of the self. (ŚU 330)

3.4 Renunciation and Detachment

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The reason for the abandonment of rites and the basis for many of the rules and customs of renunciation is the fundamental virtue that is expected to govern a renouncer’s life: detachment from and disgust toward (*vairāgya*) all worldly things. This detachment is based on the conviction that nothing within the realm of *saṃsāra*—not even the pleasures of heaven—can truly satisfy the human longing for total and permanent happiness. Detachment is the one necessary condition for renunciation.²²

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²² See JU 64; MU 116; NpU 149; PpU 278.

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Only when indifference toward all things has arisen in their minds, do they seek renunciation. Otherwise a man shall become an outcaste.
Let a wise man renounce when he is detached but live at home so long as he is attached. For the vile Brahmin who renounces while he is attached will go to hell. (NpU 138)

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When detachment is present, a person does not have to await the appropriate time for renunciation (see below 4.1). The urgency of the call for personal liberation inherent in detachment forces a person to renounce immediately: “Let him even renounce on the very day that he becomes detached” (JU 64).

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Rites, according to Brāhmaṇical theology, are performed for specific ends either in this world or after death; they are especially aimed at attaining a heavenly world. This basic ritual principle is enunciated in the well-known injunction: “One desirous of heaven should perform a sacrifice.”²³ Giving up ritual activity, therefore, is based on detachment from everything that one may desire in this life or the next. Abandoning the desire for "worlds," that is, for the happiness of the various heavens of Hindu cosmology, is a point repeated in these documents.

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²³ *svargakāmo yajeta*: Śabara's commentary on PMS 6.1.1-3.

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Betraying their male-oriented nature, our documents dwell especially on the need to be detached from the two most potent sources of attachment: one's own body and women. The body is compared to a house filled with filth, disease, and misery.

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Let him abandon this impermanent dwelling place of the elements. It has beams of bones tied with tendons. It is plastered with flesh and blood and thatched with skin. It is foul-smelling, filled with feces and urine, and infested with old age and grief. Covered with dust and harassed by pain, it is the abode of disease.
If a man finds joy in the body—a heap of flesh, blood, pus, feces, urine, tendons, marrow, and bones—that fool will find joy even in hell. (NpU 144; cf. NpU 160)

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House is a common image in Indian ascetic literature to describe the human body.²⁴ The image fits well with the homeless condition of the Indian ascetic. As a person becomes an ascetic by leaving home for the homeless state, so an ascetic must leave, that is become detached from, his body in order to attain the bodiless state of liberation. Both one's home and one's body contain numerous things that can become sources of attachment.

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²⁴ For an excellent study of the "house image" in Buddhist ascetic ideology, see Collins 1982, 165–176. On the parallel between an embodied soul in bondage and the householder, see NpU 189–190, n. 81.

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Borrowing an analogy from Hindu purificatory rites, the *Maitreya* points out that the human body is the most impure of things. One who touches it—and we are in continuous contact with our body—should take a bath as surely as one who touches a corpse or an outcaste.

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Composed of its parents' dirt, this body dies soon after it is born. It is a filthy house of joy and grief. When it is touched a bath is ordained.

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By its very nature, foul secretions continuously ooze out from its nine openings. It smells foul and it contains awful filth. When it is touched a bath is ordained. (MU 113–114)

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If the body itself is the main source of pollution, the rites people use to purify the body are utterly useless. Rites cannot purify the very source of pollution. The only thought of one living in such a filthy abode should be how best and how soon to leave it, as exemplified in the lamentable plea of King Bṛhadratha (MU 108).

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The best way to reflect on one's body is to consider it as a corpse (PhU 48; NpU 153, 175, 201). The body that we nourish, wash, decorate, clothe, and love is left at the end in a cemetery to rot, food for worms and vultures.

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Even more deadly than the love of one's own body is the lust that women, more specifically the bodies of women, arouse in men. Ascetics are constantly admonished to stay away from them.

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A man becomes intoxicated by seeing a young woman just as much as by drinking liquor. Therefore, a man should avoid from afar a woman, the mere sight of whom is poison.
He shall avoid speaking or chatting with women, looking at them, dancing, singing, or laughing with them, and reproaching them. (NpU 196–197; cf. NpU 156)
With stylish hair and painted eyes, hard to touch but pleasing to the eye, women are like the flame of sin and burn a man like straw.
Burning even from afar, sweet and yet bitter, women indeed are the fuel of hellfire, both lovely and cruel. (YU 315–316)

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Passion does not die with age. Old men continue to lust, and old women continue to arouse lust.

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A wise man, though he may be very old, should not place his confidence even in very old women: an old piece of cloth sticks to even very old patched garments. (BSU 270)

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Women are depicted not only as exciting lust in men but also as active temptresses who demoniacally pull men away from the path of virtue. A deep-seated fear and hatred of women, a veritable gynephobia, appears to have been present in many of the authors of these documents.

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The *Yājñavalkya Upaniṣad*, in a passage borrowed from the *Yogavāsiṣṭha* (1.21.1–6), attempts to create revulsion toward a woman's body:

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What, pray, is the beauty of a woman, who is a puppet of flesh furnished with tendons, bones, and joints, within a cage of limbs moved by a machine?
Examine her eyes after separating the skin, the flesh, the blood, the tears, and the fluid, and see if there is any charm. Why are you bewitched in vain?
The same breast of a girl, on which we see the brilliant splendor of a pearl necklace . . . is in time eaten with relish by dogs in remote cemeteries as if it were a little morsel of food. (YU 315)

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The *Nāradaparivrājaka* makes similar remarks regarding the female sexual organs that excite the passions of men:

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Even though a woman's private parts are not different from a deep and festering ulcer, men generally deceive themselves by imagining them to be different.
I salute those who take delight in a piece of skin split in two scented by the breaking of the wind! What could be more rash. (NpU 160)

3.5 Renunciation and Liberation

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Renunciation is presented in our Upaniṣads not as an end in itself but as the path leading to the final goal of human existence, namely liberation (NpU 130; BSU 251). Detachment from worldly things and the abandonment of rites are the necessary conditions for achieving this final goal. The *Bṛhat-Saṃnyāsa* (272) puts this clearly:

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People are bound by rites and liberated by knowledge. Wise ascetics, therefore, do not perform rites.

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Most of our Upaniṣads subscribe to the Advaita Vedānta doctrine that the world of multiplicity and our own consciousness as separate individuals are ultimately illusory, and that the knowledge of Brahman as the sole reality and of our own ultimate identity with that reality is the cause of liberation. Renunciation, therefore, amounts to achieving the freedom from attachment to worldly things and from the pursuit of all other goals in order to focus all one's energies on achieving the knowledge that grants absolute freedom.

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A renouncer who does not pursue knowledge is a false renouncer. Dire consequences await him, for he has abandoned his normal duties without undertaking the corresponding obligation to pursue knowledge.

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A man who, giving up all desires and abiding steadfastly in the Absolute, bears the staff of wisdom, is called a single-staffed ascetic.

A man who merely carries a wooden staff and, although he lacks wisdom, eats from all goes to Mahāraurava and other such terrible hells. (PhU 50)

He who renounces for the sake of wealth, food, clothes, or celebrity, falls from both paths and is unable to attain release. (MU 117)

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Such a renouncer falls from both paths, that is, from the path to heaven that requires the performance of rites and from the path to liberation that requires knowledge. A text cited in many medieval sources acknowledges that base motives prompt many people to become renouncers: "There are many Brahmins who make a living by carrying the emblem of the triple staff. He who knows not Brahman, the scriptures say, is not worthy of the triple staff" (Olivelle 1977, 64, 160).

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Even our documents acknowledge, nevertheless, that the goal of the lower types of renunciation is not directly liberation but the attainment of a heavenly world (NpU 177). Yet they posit liberation as the final goal toward which all renouncers should work.

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The revulsion toward the world, the torment of living continuously in this miserable life, and the yearning to acquire the liberating knowledge, then, should be the motives for renunciation. King Bṛhadratha's lament as he pleads with the sage Śākāyanya to instruct him in the liberating knowledge illustrates this point:

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Lord, this body is produced just by sexual intercourse and is devoid of consciousness; it is a veritable hell. Born through the urinary canal, it is built with bones, plastered with flesh, and covered with skin. It is filled with feces, urine, wind, bile, phlegm, marrow, fat, serum, and many other kinds of filth. In such a body do I live; you are my refuge.

But why speak of these when, among other things, mighty oceans dry up, lofty peaks crumble down, the pole star swerves, the wind-ropes are cut down, the earth is submerged, and gods fall from their station? I am also like that. So what purpose is there in enjoying desires within a saṃsāric existence such as this when we see that people attached to them are reborn repeatedly? So, please deliver me. In this saṃsāric existence, I am like a frog in a dark well. You, O Lord, are my only refuge. (MU 108–109)

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A man who has eradicated all attachments and acquired the liberating knowledge is the highest type of renouncer. Throughout these documents there are eulogies of the renouncer who has thus liberated himself in this very life.²⁵ The liberated renouncer, who has experienced his identity with Brahman, exclaims in joyful ecstasy:

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²⁵ LSU 25–27; PhU 47–50, 55; JU 69–71; MU 118–126; BSU 255–262; BAU 305–310.

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I am I, but also the other.
I am Brahman, I am the source.
I am the teacher of the whole world.
I am the whole world.
I am he!

I am only I, I am perfect.
I am pure, I am supreme.
I am spotless and eternal.
I am I.
I am always he!

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I am wisdom, I am special.
I am the moon, I am complete.
I am splendid, I am without grief.
I am spirit.
I am the same!
From honor and dishonor,
and from qualities I am free.
I am Śiva!
From oneness and duality
and from opposites I am free.
I am he! (MU 119–120)

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The very definition of renunciation as freedom from rites implies, as we have seen, also the freedom from Vedic injunctions, because rites are the subject of such injunctions. That freedom, however, is achieved gradually. As we shall see (chapter 5), there are several types of renouncers, and their hierarchy is determined precisely by their degree of freedom from such injunctions. At the highest level, however, stands the liberated renouncer; his freedom is total and unconditioned. He is subject to no injunction or prohibition; he transcends both the ritual sphere and the realm of morality. Liberation while still alive is thus an antinomian state. Translated into the Brāhmaṇical vocabulary, it means that the liberated renouncer is beyond *dharma*, the totality of which is subsumed in the code "*dharma* of classes and orders" (*varṇāśramadharma*).

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When a man attains the vision of his self and the rules of class and order consequently melt away, he transcends all classes and orders and abides in his own self.
There are no rules or prohibitions, no laws on what is allowed and what is forbidden, nor any other restrictions, O Nārada, for those who know Brahman. (NpU 193–194)

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To such an ascetic applies the phrase that recurs frequently in these Upaniṣads: he has done all there is to do, and so he has nothing that he needs to do.²⁶

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²⁶ PhU 55; NpU 155–156; PpU 289; TaU 245. On the medieval controversies regarding the antinomian state of a liberated individual, see Olivelle 1986 and 1987.

Cites (22)