SANYASI. Amongst the rules prescribed for Hindu men, those of the Brahman, the Kshatriya, and the Vaisya have to pass through four stages (enema) in life, viz. the Brahmachari or religious student, the Grihashta or householder, the Yana prastha or hermit, and the Bhikshuka or Sanyasi, religious mendicant, who has renounced the world ; but this term is now applied to a variety of religious mendicants, some of whom wander singly about the country, subsisting on alms, or collected in maths under a spiritual head. The Sanyasi is most iumally a worshipper of Siva. The Sanyasi is a professed ascetic, but some of them marry, an instance of which, in 1868, was the Sanyasi family at the temple of .Mahadeo at Raina pur, near Mominabad. Amongst the Vaishnava, the terms Sanyasi and Vairagi are in a great measure restricted to peculiar classes ; but amongst the Saiva, all the sects, except the San-yogi Atit, are so far excluded from the world as not to admit of married teachers,—a circumstance not uncom mon amongst the more atrict followers of Vishnu. In general, the Brahmachari or student, and the Avadhuta or Avdhauta and Alakhnami, express all the Salve class of mendicants, except perhaps Jogi. The I3ralimachari or students are also re garded as Sanyasi ; and where the term is used in a definite sense, tho twelve classes, viz. the Dandi, Bralimachari, and ten Das-nami orders, are implied. Thus Sanyasi and Vairagi are terms applied generally to all the erratic mendicants of the Hindus of all religious orders. The terms
signify a man who has abandoned the world or overcome his passions. Occasionally, however, the people distinguish between a Sanyasi and a Viragi, in which case the term Sanyasi implies the mendicant followers of Siva, and Viragi thoso of Vishnu. The distinction thus made require.s a peculiar exception, for besides the indiscriminate application of the term Sanyasi to the Vaislinava AS well as other mendicants, there is a peculiar class of them to whom it really pertains, these aro the Tridandi or Tridandi Sanyasi. These are such members of the Ramanuja or Sri Vaishnava sect as have passed through the tiro first states of the Brahmanical order, and entered that of the Sanyasi or the ascetic life. Their practices are in game other respects peculiar ; they never touch metals nor fire, and subsist upon food obtained as alms from the family of Brahnuins of the Sri Vaishnava faith alone. They are of a less erratic disposition than most other mendicants, and arc =ay met with in Upper India, but aro found in considerable ntimbers, and of high character, in the south. In their general practices, their re ligious worship and philosophical tenets, they conform to the institutes and doctrines of Rama nuja. The Asiatic Researches (v. p. 49) mention a Sanyasi at Benares who had, for 35 years, slept on a bed of iron spikes.—IVilson, Hindu Sects.