Note On Class Of Ascetics Called Unmajjaka

Author(s): A Wezler
Publisher: A Wezler

Page 12

228
Albrecht WEZLER
in later Sanskrit texts (i.e. younger than the two Epics) in which the practice called udavāsa or the ascetics called unmajjakas are mentioned, is to all appearances conspicuously small. It is hence possible that this practice became not obsolete in the strict sense of the word, but receded into the background, so to say, and that the textcritical problem posed by the Manu verse can be solved accordingly by assuming that the reading apsuväsas was secondarily replaced by ārdravāsās. But as there is only the testimony of Mallinātha, I do not, of course, want to overstatè my point although I find it difficult to believe that he himself should have invented the reading he quotes just in order to be able to adduce an authoritative passage which supports what Kālidāsa says about Pärvati's 'winter asceticism'.
Manu 6.23 as attested in the MSS. of this work as well as by the commentators, however, gives cause for still other considerations.
1. Are we really to follow Bühler in interpreting kramaso vardhayams to mean "(thus) gradually increasing (the vigour of) his austerities”? Why is this interpretation to be preferred to the alternative one which in my view) suggests itself even more naturally, viz. "gradually/step by step making [hiş tapas substance] grow/accumulating - [ascetic power/might)”?
2. Not to be doubted at all is that this verse testifies to the idea that a vänaprastha should alter his ascetic practice in accordance with the astronomically determined - course of the year, i.e. the sequence of seasons. But how old is this idea of what could be called the 'seasonal conception of tapas in India? Or when and
72. My attention has kindly been drawn by my friend Catharina Kiehnle to Rāmdās who, at any rate according to V.P. Bokil (Rajguru Ramdas, Poona 1979, p. 58f. and 61f.), is said to have decided to complete a cycle of ... thirteen crores of Rama-nama-mantra in twelve years" and to have performed the ascetic practice of muttering the mantra about thirty thousand times every day while "he stood in waist-deep water in the confluence of the two rivers", viz. Nandini and Godavari. This may indeed be a 'survival of the practice of udaväsa. And most probably this holds equally good for the brahmin giving away the merit (punya) which he had previously gained by muttering the three names "in the water of the river Godāvari for a period of 12 years", mentioned in the Vikramacarita (see my article "On the Gaining of Merit and the Incurring of Demerit through the Agency of others: I. Deeds by Proxy" in the Felicitation Volume for Prof. Botto to be published in 1992).
Finally attention should be drawn here to J. Campell Oman, The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India ..., London 1905, p. 50 and to R. Schmidt, Fakire und Fakirtum im alten und modernen Indien ..., Berlin 1908, p. 191 - both of which are evidence for the survival of this particular ascetic practice even at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. - Prof. K.L. Sharma (Jawaharlal Nehru University) kindly drew my attention to cases of a so-called jalasamādhi about which Indian newspapers occasionally report. As far as I can see, if what is meant by this expression is deliberate suicide by drowning in water, for whatever reason, be it basically religious or not, then a connection with the tradition of the ascetic practice of the unmajjakas does not seem very likely at all. This is even more true if what is really referred to is accidental death in water (which one does not want to call an accidental death for reasons of reverence, tact, etc.).
73. O.c. (see note 14), p. 293.
74. Cf. also M. Hara's article "Tapo-Dhana" in Acta Asiatica (Tokyo) 19 (1970), pp. 58-76 as also his book Koten-indo no kugyo, Tokyo 1979.
75. See also note 57. It should be noted that in his description of Pārvati performing various kinds of tapas Kalidasa too follows this sequence at one point.