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Updated: June 19, 2025
"The scene was a KUMBHA MELA at Allahabad," Lahiri Mahasaya told his disciples. "I had gone there during a short vacation from my office duties. As I wandered amidst the throng of monks and sadhus who had come from great distances to attend the holy festival, I noticed an ash-smeared ascetic who was holding a begging bowl.
One sees how easily Jewish teaching can be distorted into a doctrine of calculated Zechuth. Are the Hindus being misjudged equally? He is describing one of the Jain ascetics, and remarks: "His personal appearance gave the impression of great suffering, and his attendants all had the same appearance, contrasting very much indeed with the ordinary Sadhus of other sects.
One of them carried a "bina," a second an ordinary school-slate covered with crude cabalistic signs and a third a rude book, something like a Vani's "chopda," filled with Marathi characters, which doubtless plays a part in the fortune-telling and spirit-scaring that form the stock-in-trade of these wandering hierophants. Hardly had they disappeared than four Sadhus hove in sight.
On approaching the entrance of the temple we were struck by the appearance of a young man, who stood apart from the crowd and was of an ideal beauty. He was a member of the Sadhu sect, a "candidate for Saintship," to use the expression of one of our party. The Sadhus differ greatly from every other sect.
Jewish moralists, especially, though not exclusively, those of the mystical or Cabbalistic schools, pronounce powerfully enough against over-indulgence in all sensuous pleasures; they inculcate moderation and abstinence, and, in some cases, where the pressure of desire is very strong, prescribe painful austerities, which may be paralleled by what Professor Oman tells us of the Sadhus and Yogis of India.
This, in the first instance; and in the second, the Bagh tigers are no ordinary tigers either. The sahibs are totally mistaken. These tigers are the servants of the Sadhus, of the holy miracle-workers, who have haunted the caves now for many centuries, and who deign sometimes to take the shape of a tiger.
The surging crowd of nearly two million persons was an impressive sight, even an overwhelming one. The peculiar genius of the Indian people is the reverence innate in even the lowliest peasant for the worth of the Spirit, and for the monks and sadhus who have forsaken worldly ties to seek a diviner anchorage.
Home Rule has become so intertwined with religion by the prayers offered up in the great Southern Temples, sacred places of pilgrimage, and spreading from them to village temples, and also by its being preached up and down the country by Sadhus and Sannyasins, that it has become in the minds of the women and of the ever religious masses, inextricably intertwined with religion.
Several agree that a closer watch should be kept on "religious mendicants" who go about in the guise of Sadhus preaching sedition, and that a more intimate exchange of secret intelligence should take place with regard to the seditious propaganda between the different States and the Government of India.
Yogis and Sadhus do not generally kill wild animals, thinking it sinful to destroy any living creature, be it even a cobra or a tiger, so they simply keep out of the way of noxious animals. There exists only one brotherhood in India whose members possess all secrets, and from whom nothing in nature is concealed.
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