120
Fragm. LIV.
Pseudo-Origen, Philosoph. 24, ed. Delarue, Paris,
1783, vol. I. p. 904.
Of the Brâhmaṇs and their Philosophy.
(Of. Fragm. xli., xliv., xlv.)
Of the Brachhmans in India.
There is among the Brachhmaṇs in India a sect of philosophers who adopt an independent life, and abstain from animal food and all victuals cooked by fire, being content to subsist upon fruits, which they do not so much as gather from the trees, but pick up when they have dropped to the ground, and their drink is the water of the river Tagabena.[1] Throughout life they go about naked, saying that the body has been given by the Deity as a covering for the soul.[2] They hold that God is light,[3] but not such light as we see
- ↑ Probably the Sanskṛit Tungvenâ, now the Tungabhadra, a large affluent of the Kṛishṇâ.
- ↑ Vide Ind. Ant. vol. V. p. 128, note †. A doctrine of the Vedânta school of philosophy, according to which the soul is incased as in a sheath, or rather a succession of sheaths. The first or inner case is the intellectual one, composed of the sheer and simple elements uncombined, and consisting of the intellect joined with the five senses. The second is the mental sheath, in which mind is joined with the preceding, or, as some hold, with the organs of action. The third comprises these organs and the vital faculties, and is called the organic or vital case. These three sheaths (kośa) constitute the subtle frame which attends the soul in its transmigrations. The exterior case is composed of the coarse elements combined in certain proportions, and is called the gross body. See Golebrooke's Essay on the Philosophy of the Hindus, Cowell's ed. pp. 395-6.
- ↑ The affinity between God and light is the burden of the Gâyatri or holiest verse of the Veda.
