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Updated: July 3, 2025
The Gymnosophists of the ancient Indians had perhaps something resembling this, and that Calanus, who provided for Alexander the Great the spectacle of his burning alive, had doubtless been encouraged by the great examples of his masters and trained by great sufferings not to fear pain.
It may, however, be reasonably enough inferred that it was very similar to that for which the magi in general were held in such high estimation: although they were excluded, as beings of too sacred a nature, from the ordinary occurrences of life. Their Brahmins, or Gymnosophists, were regarded with as much reverence as the magi, and probably were more worthy of it.
I may remind you that the gymnosophists of India can remain motionless, not merely for a year, but during twenty, thirty, or forty years." "By Jupiter!" cried Cotta, "that is a strange madness. For man was born to move and act, and idleness is an unpardonable crime, because it is an injury to the State.
"'The wisdom of the Indians, I replied, 'is entirely borrowed from Pythagoras. "'Did I not tell you so? 'Euphronius appealed to his disciples. "'Invariably, they replied. "'As if a barbarian could teach a Greek! said he. "'It is much if he is able to learn from one, said they. "'Pythagoras, then, said Euphronius addressing me, did not resort to India to be instructed by the Gymnosophists?
These men, called Gymnosophists, were reputed to be extremely ready and succinct in their answers, which he made trial of, by putting difficult questions to them, letting them know that those whose answers were not pertinent, should be put to death, of which he made the eldest of them judge.
How inseparably connected in human thought is sorrow with all permanent hope is indicated in the penances which men have imposed upon themselves, from the earliest Gymnosophists of India, and the Stylitæ of Syria, down to the monastic orders of the Romish Church in later times.
Its votaries resemble the Gymnosophists of old, and while they profess to make their chief end pleasure, we can only learn that they expose themselves to every torture and every pain!
"These are the anchorites of the Theban desert," said Colonna calmly; "followers not of Christ and His apostles, and the great fathers, but of the Greek pupils of the Egyptian pupils of the Brachmans and Gymnosophists." And Clement thought that he burned to go and embrace the holy men and tell them his troubles, and seek their advice.
I am a knight-errant, and not one of those whose names Fame has never thought of immortalising in her record, but of those who, in defiance and in spite of envy itself, and all the magicians that Persia, or Brahmans that India, or Gymnosophists that Ethiopia ever produced, will place their names in the temple of immortality, to serve as examples and patterns for ages to come, whereby knights-errant may see the footsteps in which they must tread if they would attain the summit and crowning point of honour in arms."
In iv. 30, 32, v. 22, vi. 24, he ascribes to Apollonius regular Socratic disputations, and in vi. 11, a long and flowery speech in the presence of the Gymnosophists modes of philosophical instruction totally at variance with the genius of the Pythagorean school, the Philosopher's Letters still extant, and the writer's own description of his manner of teaching, i. 17.
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