fewer sides of life a mortal touches, the better. All that makes for colour and vividness and joy in life must be sacrificed, and if through voluntary starvation life itself should go, the less risk is there of doing those actions which involve reincarnation.
To men believing thus, the life of the professed ascetic offered irresistible attractions. As such they were cut off from wife and child, and from all the labours and keen joys and sorrows these entail; clothing, food, or shelter need not claim their thought or work; houseless and effortless they might wander at will through a land of hospitality and sunshine.
To understand the creeds of India one must, of course, remember its climate: over a large part of the country, except during the rainy season, when ascetics suspend their wanderings, it is always fine: no drenching rain and (in the greater part of India) no biting frost compel men to provide themselves with houses or fires. The intense heat discourages exertion and robs men of energy, till rest seems the greatest bliss and meditation an alluring duty. And then, as we know only too well, the influence of the climate breeds pessimism eventually in the blithest European or Indian. In the east death and disease come with such tragic swiftness, and famine and pestilence with such horrifying frequency, that the fewer hostages one has given to fortune, the happier is one’s lot.[1] To the poor and unaided in ancient India justice was unknown and life and property but ill secured, just as we may see in many native states to this day. All these influences, creed, climate, pessimism and injustice, pressed men more and more towards the pathway of the professed ascetic’s life; but the door of this pathway was barred more and more firmly as time went on to every qualification but that of birth.
- ↑ 'Happy are we, happy live we who call nothing our own; when Mithilā is on fire, nothing is burnt that belongs to me.' Uttarādhyayana, S.B.E., xlv, p. 37.
