1. The renouncer: his individuality and his community.
- Author
-
Tambiah, S.J.
- Subjects
INDIC castes ,BRAHMANISM ,RITES & ceremonies ,COMMUNITY-school relationships - Abstract
The article discusses several issues related to renouncer. The author began this essay by pointing to a dialectic in Louis Dumont's discussion of renunciation, orthodox Brahmanism has been ambivalent towards, even resentful of the renouncer's vocation, and has incorporated it as an end puru&sbdot;ārtha appropriately adopted only as the last stage of a man's life cycle, especially after the life of the householder had been completed and its aims fulfilled, yet, the renouncer, his ascetic transcendental aims and the monastic and sect organization that he pioneered, deeply affected mainstream Hinduism, and indeed fertilized it periodically. One thing is clear from the early texts of both Buddhism and Brahmanism. While Brahmanism came to accept the sramana as an individual renouncer and recluse, it was antagonistic to monastic Buddhism and Jainism, because it appreciated the fact that renouncer, organized as a community and as a fraternity, were a major threat to the Brahmans beliefs and supremacy. Taking early Buddhism as our exemplar, the author have seen how the monastic communities subject to a disciplinary code of conduct and teacher disciple as well as fraternal relationships, were not only ideal for the transmission of philosophical wisdom and the practice of an ascetic mode of life, but also for making a missionary appeal to the lay public.
- Published
- 1981
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