When the householder is advanced in years, when he sees his skin become wrinkled and his hair gray-, when he sees the son of his son, the time is said to have come for him to enter the third stage of life. He should now disengage himself from all family ties— except that his wife may accompany him if she choose—and repair to a lonely wood, taking with him his sacred fires and the implements required for the daily and period ical offering. Clad in a deer's skin, or in a single piece of cloth, or in a bark garment, with his hair and nails uncut, the hermit is to subsist exclusively on food growing wild in the forest, such as roots, green herbs, fruits, wild rice and grain. Ile must not accept gifts from any one, except of what may be absolutely necessary to maintain him; but with his own little hoard he should, on the contrary', honor to the best of his ability those who visit his hermitage. llis time must be spent in reading the metaphysiod treatises of the Veda, in making oblations, and in undergoing various kinds of priva tions and austerities, with a view to mortifying his passions and producing in his mind an entire indifference to worldly objects. Having by these means succeeded in over coming all sensual affections and desires, and in acquiring perfect equanimity towards everything around him, the hermit has fitted himself for the final and most exalted order, that of the devotee or religious mendicant. As such lie has no further need of either mortilications or religious observances; but "with the sacrificial fires reposited in his mind" he may devote the remainder of his days to meditating on the divinity. Taking up his abode at the foot of a tree in total solitude, "with no companion but his own soul," clad in a coarse garment, he should carefully avoid injuring any creature or giving offense to any human being that may happen to come near him. Once in a day, in the evening, " when the charcoal fire is extinguished and the smoke no longer issues from the tire-place, when the pestle is at rest, when the people have taken their meats and the dishes mile removed," he should go near the habitations of men in order to beg the little food that may suffice to sustain his feeble frame. Ever pure of mind, he
should thus bide his time, "as a servant expecteth his wages," wishing neither for death nor for life, until at last his soul is freed from its fetters and absorbed in the eternal spirit, the impersonal, self-existent Brahma.
The study of the ancient Hindu literature has taught us that some practices which have hitherto, or until recently, prevailed in India, and which have contributed much to Hindu .inorals into disrepute, are comparatively modern innovations. Thus, the rites of suite (prop. sat", "the faithful wife") or the voluntary immolation of widows, which was abolished with considerable difficulty about 30 years ago, seems to have sprung up originally as a local habit among the Kshatrips, and, on becoming more and 11101V prevalent, to have at length received Brahmanical sanction. The alleged con formity of the rite to the Hindu scriptures has been shown to have rested chiefly on a Misquotation, if not an intentional garbling, of a certain passage of the Rigvala, which, so far from authorizing the cremation of the widow, bids her return from the funeral rite to her home and resume her worldly duties: Cases of infanticide are still frequent in many parts of India, especially among the Itajputs; but the priests have never sane tinned the practice. Its origin has to be sought in the enormous extravagances of wed ding feasts, and in a notion that parents arc disgraced by their daughters remaining husbandless. Hence, also, the practice of early marriage, which is the more mischievous as the Hindu law noes not allow widows to marry. The cow has been held in high honor in India from early times; but the abhorrence of slaughtering and eating the flesh of kine is of late origin. It has been conclusively shown by a Hindu scholar that in former times beef formed a staple article of food. (For particulars and varieties of Hindu doctrines, etc., see INDIA, BUDDHISM, PAItSEES, SIKHS, VEDA, 3IAIIUT. SURYA, USIIAS, UPANISHAD, METEMPSYCHOSIS, VEDANTA, VAISIINAVAS, SAIVAS, SARTAS.)