Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/99

 or nun, but all the little observances in regard to dress, eating, walking, social intercourse, and so forth, to which he must attend. It contains two hundred and fifty rules, and the breach of any of these is attended with its appropriate penance, according to the magnitude of the offense.

Asceticism was deeply rooted in the native land of Buddhism long before the appearance of the reformer who gave it, by the foundation of communities, an organization and a purpose. Just as in Egypt there were many solitary saints before the time of Pachomius and Antony, so in India there were holy men who had subdued their senses before the gospel of deliverance was preached by Gautama Buddha. Some of these dispensed altogether with clothing, a custom which was frowned upon by Buddhism and put down wherever its influence was paramount. Others lived in lonely places, exposed to every sort of hardship and avoiding every form of carnal pleasure. The popular mind combined the practice of austerity with the acquisition of extraordinary powers over nature. Hence, no doubt, an additional motive for its exercise. The Ramayana abounds with descriptions of holy hermits, living on roots in the forests, and practising the utmost austerity. Visvamitra, for example, the very type of an ascetic, was a monarch, who determined to obtain from the gods the title of "Brahman saint," the highest to which he, not by birth a Brahman, could aspire. This was the manner in which he went to work:—

"His arms upraised, without a rest, With but one foot, the earth he pressed; The air his food, the hermit stood Still as a pillar hewn from wood. Around him in the summer days Five mighty fires combined to blaze. In floods of rain no veil was spread, Save clouds, to canopy his head. In the dark dews both night and day Couched in the stream the hermit lay."

Twice did the gods, alarmed at the power he was likely to