Samnyasa Upanishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s3.3

c5.s3.3

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."