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THE CULT OF ASCETICISM & RENUNCIATION
consequent destitution and degradation of the people. Historical research has revealed the fact that external splendour of the Roman Empire reached the apex just when the barbarous system of slavery was eating into the very foundations of the imperial structure. That was the era of Augustus and Constantine. Later on, Justinian satisfied his vanity of eclipsing the magnificence of his vain-glorious predecessors just when the economic fabrics of the empire were in ruins, and wide-spread bankruptcy and destitution of the toiling masses were flaming the superstition of monasticism.
For the construction of the Great Wall of China, more than twenty-five per cent of the entire social labour was withdrawn from productive activities. The result inevitably was a disastrous famine which reduced the population of the country by half. It was precisely in that period that Buddhist monasticism flourished in China, and the impatience for the bliss of Nirwana urged thousands of unhappy fanatics to the incredible practice of hurling themselves down from high mountains which, by virtue of those inhuman acts, acquired the reputation of possessing miraculous charms.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that the national grandeur of India from the time of Asoka to the reign of Harsha-Vardhan and right up to the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni was reared upon a different social basis. Had it been so, the same
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