Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/118

 99 they advance in age each succeeding master is more accomplished than his predecessor. The philosophers have their abode in a grove in front of the city within a moderate- sized enclosure. They live in a simple style, and lie on beds of rushes or (deer) skins. They abstain from. animal food and sexual pleasures, and spend their time in listening to serious discourse, and in imparting their knowledge to such as will listen to them. The hearer is not allowed to speak, or even to cough, and much less to spit, and if he offends in any of these ways he is cast out from their society that very day, as being a mail who is wanting in self-restraint. After living in this manner for seven-and- thirty years, each individual retires to his own property, where he lives for the rest of his days in ease and secu- rity, f They then array themselves in fine muslin, and wear a few trinkets of gold on their fingers and in their ears. They eat flesh, but not that of animals employed in labour. They abstain from hot and highly seasoned food. They marry as many wives as they please, with a view to have t " A mistake (of the Greek writers) originates in their ignorance of the fourfold division of a BrShma^'s life. Thns ' they speak of men who had been for many years sophists marrying and returning to common life (alluding probably to a student who, having completed the austerities of the first period, becomes a householder) :" Elphinstone's His- tory of India, p. 236, where it is also remarked that the writers erroneously prolong? the period during which students listen to their instructors m silence and respect, making it extend in all cases to thirty-seven, which is the greatest age to which Mann (chap. III. sec. 1) permits it in any case to be protracted. Digitized by Google