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PERHAPS in no country in the world is more importance attached to the proper observances of religion than in India, and the greatest reverence is felt towards men who adopt a religious life. For ages Indians have learnt to place the man who renounces the world above him who rules and conquers it. The power of the priest is too well known to need mention here, and although the spread of western education has done much to undermine his influence, the family priest still reigns supreme in the homes of India. But outside the priestly caste there are numbers of men who take up a religious life, and chief amongst them are those known as sadhus and sanydsts. There is often confusion between these terms, and they are supposed to be identical. The main differenee seems to be that the sadhu’s is a life vowed to religion from the beginning, whilst the sanyasi’s may begin at any time, even in old age.
Many Indians desire to consecrate their last years to religion, so they cast off all family ties and all worldly ambitions and responsibilities, and for the remainder of their days practise the austerities of the sanyasi life. It is generally understood that such men have fulfilled all the ordinary obligations of life, having married and had a family, and done a share of the world’s work.
A sadhu, however, early in life renounces the world and all its pleasures. He never marries or enters upon the ordinary occupations of the world.
The sadhu life is one of untold possibilities, of tremendous temptations: a life that commands the respectful attention of India, for it is a type of heroism which dares to lose the world and all the world may offer in its absolute self-abandonment. To one who perfectly carries out this ideal, the proudest head in India will always bow in reverence and humility. Both sanyasi and sadhu adopt the saffron robe—the timehonoured dress which gives them the freedom of all India. The simplicity of their life is such that they have no home and carry no money, and amongst Hindus it is an act of religious merit to provide them with shelter and food.
From the earliest days this kind of life has had great attractions for the pious minds of India, and during the centuries men have voluntarily sacrificed the world and all it stands for, that by all kinds of hardships and self-denial they might satisfy the deep longings of the soul. Numberless times men of noble aspiration have by this means striven to obtain peace of soul and absorption in the deity.
The commonest sight in any of the holy cities of India is that of one or many sadhus practising the austerities of their chosen lot, either by swinging over a slow fire, holding up the right arm until it has stiffened and the nails have grown through the back of the hand, sitting on a bed of spikes, or under a vow of silence in meditation on the banks of some sacred stream. Unfortunately this kind of life has been subject to the most terrible abuse, and there is scarcely a more disgusting sight in the world than the filthy beggar who, donning the saffron robe, passes from house to house terrorizing the ignorant inhabitants, and cursing them when he cannot wring from their unwilling hands the gifts he asks.
The ordinary winter visitor to India cannot but be impressed by the numerous signs he sees in all the. holy places he passes through, that many Indians are seeking God, “if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.” And whilst the sight of numberless filthy fakirs awakens a sense of disgust and repulsion, surely no Christian man can see the self-torture of many sanyasis without a deep yearning to discover to them the great secret of the peace they so arduously strive to find.
In India life can be lived at its simplest. The climate enables men to do with little clothing, and to live largely an out-of-door life. Except where the stream of western life has turned men aside to greater luxury, the Indian still feels satisfied with a simple diet and life. Hence through the centuries, as earnest souls have gone in quest of higher spiritual things, it is not surprising that they have chosen the simplest possible life, and added to its hardships by self-imposed austerities.
To people of western. nations, with their harder climate and different customs, such simplicity is impossible, and to many even difficult to understand. The true sadhu does not retire to a monastery whcre food and shelter are assured. He wanders homeless from place to place, possesses only the meagre clothes he wears, and is utterly destitute.
Dr. Farquhar, in his Crown of Hinduism, says :—
As long as the world lasts men will look back with wonder on the ascetics of India. Their quiet surrender of every earthly privilege, and their strong endurance of many forms of suffering will be an inspiration to all generations of thinking Indians. For nearly three thousand years the ascetics of India have stood forth, a speaking testimony to the supremacy of the spiritual.
The ideal, is a great one. Christianize this ideal, make it a renunciation for the sake of others, that remaining ‘“‘in the world but not of it”? a man “ shall endure all things” in an untiring search for other souls, and we have the noblest life attainable on earth.
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