final deliverance from saṃsāra, the revolution of bodily and personal existence.
The pious Brāhman, longing to attain the summum bonum on the dissolution of his frail body, was enjoined to pass through a succession of four orders or stages of life, viz. those of brahmachārin, or religious student; gṛihastha (or gṛihamedhin), or householder; vanavāsin (or vānaprastha), or anchorite; and sannyāsin (or bhikshu), or religious mendicant. Theoretically this course of life was open and even recommended to every twice-born man, his distinctive class-occupations being in that case restricted to the second station, or that of married life. Practically, however, those belonging to the Kshatriya and Vaiśya castes were, no doubt, contented, with few exceptions, to go through a term of studentship in order to obtain a certain amount of religious instruction before entering into the married state, and plying their professional duties. In the case of the sacerdotal class, the practice probably was all but universal in early times; but gradually a more and more limited proportion even of this caste seem to have carried their religious zeal to the length of self-mortification involved in the two final stages. On the youth having been invested with the badge of his caste, he was to reside for some time in the house of some religious teacher, well read in the Veda, to be instructed in the knowledge of the scriptures and the scientific or theoretic treatises attached to them, in the social duties of his caste, and in the complicated system of purificatory and sacrificial rites. According to the number of Vedas he intended to study, the duration of this period of instruction was to be, probably in the case of Brāhmanical students chiefly, of from twelve to forty-eight years; during which time the virtues of modesty, duty, temperance and self-control were to be firmly implanted in the youth’s mind by his unremitting observance of the most minute rules of conduct. During all this time the student had to subsist entirely on food obtained by begging from house to house; and his behaviour towards the preceptor and his family was to be that prompted by respectful attachment and implicit obedience. In the case of girls no investiture takes place, but for them the nuptial ceremony is considered as an equivalent to that rite. On quitting the teacher’s abode, the young man returns to his family and takes a wife. To die without leaving legitimate offspring, and especially a son, capable of performing the periodical rite of obsequies (śrāddha), consisting of offerings of water and balls of rice, to himself and his two immediate ancestors, is considered a great misfortune by the orthodox Hindū. There are three sacred “debts” which a man has to discharge in life, viz. that which is due to the gods, and of which he acquits himself by daily worship and sacrificial rites; that due to the ṛishis, or ancient sages and inspired seers of the Vedic texts, discharged by the daily study of the scripture; and the “final debt” which he owes to his manes, and of which he relieves himself by leaving a son. To these three some authorities add a fourth, viz. the debt owing to humankind, which demands his continually practising kindness and hospitality. Hence the necessity of a man’s entering into the married state. When the bridegroom leads the bride from her father’s house to his own home, and becomes a gṛiha-paṭi, or householder, the fire which has been used for the marriage ceremony accompanies the couple to serve them as their gārhapatya, or domestic fire. It has to be kept up perpetually, day and night, either by themselves or their children, or, if the man be a teacher, by his pupils. If it should at any time become extinguished by neglect or otherwise, the guilt incurred thereby must be atoned for by an act of expiation. The domestic fire serves the family for preparing their food, for making the five necessary daily and other occasional offerings, and for performing the sacramental rites above alluded to. No food should ever be eaten that has not been duly consecrated by a portion of it being offered to the gods, the beings and the manes. These three daily offerings are also called by the collective name of vaiśvadeva, or sacrifice “to all the deities.” The remaining two are the offering to Brahmă, i.e. the daily lecture of the scriptures, accompanied by certain rites, and that to men, consisting in the entertainment of guests. The domestic observances—many of them probably ancient Āryan family customs, surrounded by the Hindūs with a certain amount of adventitious ceremonial—were generally performed by the householder himself, with the assistance of his wife. There is, however, another class of sacrificial ceremonies of a more pretentious and expensive kind, called śrauta rites, or rites based on śritu, or revelation, the performance of which, though not indispensable, were yet considered obligatory under certain circumstances (see BRĀHMAṆA). They formed a very powerful weapon in the hands of the priesthood, and were one of the chief sources of their subsistence. However great the religious merit accruing from these sacrificial rites, they were obviously a kind of luxury which only rich people could afford to indulge in. They constituted, as it were, a tax, voluntary perhaps, yet none the less compulsory, levied by the priesthood on the wealthy laity.
When the householder is advanced in years, “when he perceives his skin become wrinkled and his hair grey, when he sees the son of his son,” the time is said to have come for him to enter the third stage of life. He should now disengage himself from all family ties—except that his wife may accompany him, if she chooses—and repair to a lonely wood, taking with him his sacred fires and the implements required for the daily and periodical offerings. Clad in a deer’s skin, in a single piece of cloth, or in a bark garment, with his hair and nails uncut, the hermit is to subsist exclusively on food growing wild in the forest, such as roots, green herbs, and wild rice and grain. He must not accept gifts from any one, except of what may be absolutely necessary to maintain him; but with his own little hoard he should, on the contrary, honour, to the best of his ability, those who visit his hermitage. His time must be spent in reading the metaphysical treatises of the Veda, in making oblations, and in undergoing various kinds of privation and austerities, with a view to mortifying his passions and producing in his mind an entire indifference to worldly objects. Having by these means succeeded in overcoming all sensual affections and desires, and in acquiring perfect equanimity towards everything around him, the hermit has fitted himself for the final and most exalted order, that of devotee or religious mendicant. As such he has no further need of either mortifications or religious observances; but “with the sacrificial fires reposited in his mind,” he may devote the remainder of his days to meditating on the divinity. Taking up his abode at the foot of a tree in total solitude, “with no companion but his own soul,” clad in a coarse garment, he should carefully avoid injuring any creature or giving offence to any human being that may happen to come near him. Once a day, in the evening, “when the charcoal fire is extinguished and the smoke no longer issues from the fire-places, when the pestle is at rest, when the people have taken their meals and the dishes are removed,” he should go near the habitations of men, in order to beg what little food may suffice to sustain his feeble frame. Ever pure of mind he should thus bide his time, “as a servant expects his wages,” wishing neither for death nor for life, until at last his soul is freed from its fetters and absorbed in the eternal spirit, the impersonal self-existent Brahmă.
The tendency towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence had resulted in some minds, as has been remarked before, in a kind of monotheistic notion of the origin of the universe. In the literature of the Brāhmaṇa period we meet with this conception as a common element of speculation; and so far from its being considered incompatible with the existence of a universal spirit, Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, is generally allowed a prominent place in the pantheistic theories. Yet the state of theological speculation, reflected in these writings, is one of transition. The general drift of thought is essentially pantheistic, but it is far from being reduced to a regular system, and the ancient form of belief still enters largely into it. The attributes of Prajāpati, in the same way, have in them elements of a purely polytheistic nature, and some of the attempts at reconciling this new-fangled deity with the traditional belief are somewhat awkward. An ancient classification of the gods represented them as being thirty-three
