Photo by Rev. W. P. E^lwood 

 DKVOTKKS PARADING THROUGH THE STRE^ETS BE:aRING GRE:aT KARTHI^N POTS FlLIvKD 



WITH pire:, at the: mariamman pkstivai., PAI^ANI 



fame inflicts cruel torture upon himself ; 

 soon he becomes an object of veneration; 

 his fame spreads abroad ; miracles are 

 attributed to him ; money and food flow 

 in; or it may be that spiritual pride and 

 vanity inspire the sufferer. 



A man deeply affected by world-weari- 

 ness, one upon whom the tedium of ex- 

 istence presses hard, those upon whom 

 sorrow, want, and misery bear heavily, 

 those discomforted in the world strife or 

 subject to domestic disappointment, or 

 disillusionment, in the West these some- 

 times find relief in suicide ; in India, in 

 asceticism. 



Buddhist and Jain, Hindu and Moham- 

 medan, all still feel the impulse that 

 2,500 years ago drove forth the Indian as- 

 cetic, bare-headed, bare-footed, naked, or 

 nearly so, and during all these centuries 

 has kept them wandering, sometimes 

 without any reliance on or belief in God, 

 mortifying the flesh, and all in order to 

 secure cessation from the evils of re- 

 birth, wandering ceaselessly, sometimes 

 blamelessly, while generation after gen- 

 eration has come and gone, nations risen, 



decayed, and vanished, 

 ceaseless wonder. 



It is a source of 



tpie: inpi.ue:nce op The: sadhu on indian 

 1.1FE: 



What has been the result of this 2,500 

 years of painful asceticism? 



Under the old regime, before the days 

 of the post-office and railway and tele- 

 graph, these wandering ascetics were 

 news-carriers from one part of the coun- 

 try to another. Ideas which might be fer- 

 menting in one locality were carried by 

 them to other localities. 



Politically the influence of the Sadhu 

 has been against the development of a 

 healthy, national life. His detachment 

 from human interests, his philosophic 

 outlook upon life as an evil, a delusion 

 unworthy of serious consideration, has 

 worked against any serious effort for the 

 development of a strong political organ- 

 ization and has made India an easy prey 

 to the despoiler. 



From the religious standpoint his 

 theory as to the efficacy of austerities 

 and his belief in the necessity of separa- 



1287 



