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The Organization of the Sannyasis of the Vedanta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

J. N. Farquhar
Affiliation:
Professor of Comparative Religion in Manchester University

Extract

Two sannyāsī problems have long troubled me, first, how it was that the early rule, Any educated twice-born man can become a sannyāsī, was supplanted by the rule, Only Brāhmans can enter the order, and secondly, how it came about that, in North India, seven of the ten sub-orders of sannyāsīs became flooded with non-Brāhmans and lost their purity.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1925

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References

page 480 note 1 Max Müller states this rule plainly in his Hibbert Lectures, 343; and it also occurs in Āryavidyā Sudhānidhi, 153.

page 481 note 1 P. 29.

page 482 note 1 The Chauṣaṣṭha Monastery.

page 483 note 1 It is probably true, as the tradition strongly asserts, that Madhusūdana initiated only Kṣatriyas and Vaiśyas, but it is clear that multitudes of Sūdras were admitted at later dates.

page 484 note 1 P. 78.

page 484 note 2 Mr. Smith failed to recognize the names of the sub-orders under their Persian disguise.

page 484 note 3 This explains the practice of Totā Purī, Rāmakṛṣṇa's guru; see my Modern Religious Movements in India, 191.

page 486 note 1 Several of the statements in my account of Śaṅkara's daśnāmī sannyāsīs on p. 174 of my Outline of the Religious Literature of India require to be corrected in accordance with the facts set forth in this paper.