Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/124

 105 neither live in cities nor even in houses. They clothe themselves with the bark of trees, and sub- sist upon acorns, and drink water by lifting it to their mouth with their hands. They neither marry nor beget children [like those ascetics of our own day called the Enkrat^tai. Among the Indians are those philosophers also who follow the precepts of B o u 1 1 a,§ whom they honour as a god on ac- count of his extraordinary sanctity.] § V. 1. Bovra. — ^The passage admits of a diflferent ren- dering : ** They (the Hylobioi) are those among the Indians who follow the precepts of Boutta." Colfebrooke in his Ob' servations on the Sect of the Jains, has quoted this passage from Clemens to controvert the opinion that the religion and institutions of the orthodox Hmdus are more modem than the doctrines of Jina and of Bnddha. " Here/' he says, " to luy apprehension, the followers of Buddha are clearly distinguished from the Brachmanes and Sarmanes. The latter, called Germanea b^ Strabo, and Samansaans by Porphyrins, ara the ascetics of a different religion, and may have belonged to the sect of Jina, or to another. The Brachmanes are apparently those who are described by Philostratus and Hierocles as worshipping the sun; and by Strabo and by Arrian as performing sacrifices for the common benefit of the nation, as well as for individuals ... They are expressly discriminated from the sect of Buddha . by one ancient author, and fromtibie Sarmanes (a) or Sama- nsaans (ascetics of various tribes) by others. They are de- scribed by more than one authority as worshipping the sun, as performing sacrifices, and as denying the eternity of the world, and maintaining other tenets incompatible with the supposition that the sects of Buddha or Jiaa could be meant. Their manners and doctrine, as described l»y these authors, are quite conformable with the notions and practice of the orthodox Hindus. It may therefore be confidently inferred that the followers of the Vedas flour- ished in India when it was -isited by the Greeks under Alexander, and continued to flourish from the time of MegasthenSs, who described them in the fourth century before Christ, to that of Porphyrins, who speaks of them, on later authority, in the third century after Christ." (a) Samana is the Pali form of the older ^amana. N