Ascetics in India

Main article: India

Gosain

The monk warrior is a famous figure in the history of medieval Europe and the Middle East. Much less is known about armed Hindu ascetics who played a significant role in the Indian wars of the eighteenth and first decades of the nineteenth centuries.

The role of religious devotees, called sannyasi, fakir, naga or gosain (gosina, gossai, gosavi and goswa), was noted in historical literature in connection with their military and economic activities in North and West India.

Letters and memoirs of the mid-17th century, starting from the time of the French traveler Tavernier, often mention these brave warriors. During the troubled years of the final collapse of Mughal power in India, most of its northern regions were captured by looting gangs of armed religious ascetics, who usually traveled in large groups of cavalry and infantry, taking great tribute under the guise of alms from the areas through which they passed, and ready to fight anyone who opposed their advancement. In the ranks of these warrior monks, representatives of all the main religious orders that were then founded in North India could be found.

The ancient orders are not at all proud of this remarkable episode in their history. Some go so far as to deny that their brotherhood played any role in these events. However, among other strong evidence, the clear distinction still drawn in several orders between the true consecrated and the modern descendants (in a straight or spiritual line) of the old Naga fighters makes this fact indisputable.

History of paramilitary orders formed during Mughal rule

Talking about the brotherhood of peaceful ascetics who suddenly took up arms is unlikely to be fair. In the case of militant unification such as Sikhs, it is likely that this was the case, although even the Sikh community never went without its non-belligerent members. Militant Sikhs are distinguished by the title Akali, "immortals." The order was founded by the Tenth Guru.

However, the transformation of other orders followed the path of reception with or without any formal initiation ceremony, a large number of warriors, solely for defense purposes. Calling on such a ​​vooruzhennuyu force was clearly easier than dissolving it when its presence began to cause inconvenience. If the situation were less dangerous, it is hard to imagine having to resort to such a desperate means.

At that point, it seemed to be the only alternative to total extinction. Harmless sadhus who attended large religious fairs preferred to travel in the company of armed comrades-in-arms. In times of imminent danger, rival sects, forgetting their theological differences, turned to a military leader who, in the role of mahant, or abbot, presided over the akhara, or monastic settlement, best able to provide effective protection. Yet opening the doors of religious orders to this undisciplined crowd of nominal devotees couldn't help but have a profound impact on their subsequent history.

The origin of the movement is of great interest. Successive waves of Muslim invasion beginning in the twelfth century brought to India, as part of the conquering armies, crowds of reckless adventurers of all stripes. Among them were a large number of Muslim fakirs or dervish (darwesh), who were introduced to the use of weapons by the religious wars of that time. Armed with spears and battle axes, they roamed the conquered areas freely, killing and robbing at will. Hindu ascetic orders were among those most affected at their hands. Religious pilgrimage sites, with their constant stream of pious offerings, were a favorite hunting ground for fanatical faqirs. Deadly attacks were carried out on groups of defenseless pilgrims bathing in these sacred places. The sympathies of the Muslim authorities were mostly on the side of the aggressors. In the absence of remedies, this senseless violence inevitably triggered a response.

Yogi - followers of Gorakhnath

Of the famous Hindu ascetic orders, the first to resort to arms were yogis, or nathi, disciples of Gorakhnath, commonly known as kanfata (forked ears) due to the heavy pendants of stone or metal they wore in their ears. In both theory and practice, the yogi was less constrained by the characteristic Hindu doctrine of ahimsa (harmlessness) than members of other religious orders. From earliest times, the cult was associated with dark and intimidating rites in which the sacrificial sword played an important role, and human sacrifices were not uncommon. Yogis were also great practitioners of magic, and were widely credited with possessing occult powers as a result of their asceticism: a reputation that allowed them to play to particular effect on the hopes and fears of those who sought secular power. The yogic adept thus became a trusted advisor to the Rajas and nobles, and often a secret agent in promoting their plans.

There can be no doubt that it is as not just "ghost comforters" but powerful secular allies that we find these "Druids of India," as Tod picturesquely calls them, attached in the early period to the courts of several Rajput princes such as Bappa Rawal of Mewar (Udaipur) and Rao Jodha of Marwar (Jodhpur).

One of these yogic advisers of a later time, when the master's affairs were running out, predicted his imminent accession to the throne. Colonel Tod quipped about this case: "The prophetic gurus surrounding the princes turn out to be dangerous comrades when, in addition to the position of compilers of drugs and interpreters of dreams, they are endowed with the power to realize their own predictions!" ^[1]

Therefore, it is not surprising that of the famous historical orders of yoga, the first to offer armed resistance to Muslim oppressors. It is also easy to see how, with their growing numbers and power, the war of self-defense soon turned into active aggression, not only against Muslim abusers but also against their Hindu co-religionists.

Dr. Farquhar cites, among other examples, the case of the leader of the yogis, who around 1500 C.E. "had his lands in Western India and contained a significant amount of yogis. Every three or four years, about three thousand of these warriors went on pilgrimages and taxed the whole country with indemnity. " "Never have I seen yogis like this," exclaims reformer Kabir around the same time. "Should I call such people ascetics or bandits?^[2]..

Sannyasi

The next important group to join the militant movement is believed to have been the Sannyasi, the most revered of all classical religious orders. The Sannyasi, reorganized by prominent Vedantist scholar Shankaracharya in the ninth century, were divided into ten directions, each with its own special designation. "The monasteries of all ten suborders are still found in the south, their sannyasi are all Brahmins; but in the north there are only pure monasteries of the sub-orders of Tirtha, Ashram and Saraswati. "

The term "gosain" was broadly applied to followers of Shaivism, some of whom were priests, others were wandering poor monks, others served as mercenaries in the army of princes and leaders in the eighteenth century, others lived in maths ("monasteries") in the main cities and combined religious and commercial activities, and the fourth settled in rural areas, where they had extensive land holdings to maintain their maths.

The term "gosain" comes from the Sanskrit "goswamin" (lord of passions) and was originally understood as a person who, for the sake of veneration of God and for the good of his soul, completely curbed his passions and could devote his whole life to devotion and penance.

The eighteenth-century Gosains traced their spiritual origins to religious leader Shankara Acharya, who had four principal disciples (chela), who in turn had a total of ten disciples, each of whom founded a math. All gosains theoretically belonged to one of the corps or groups of these original chelas, who took as their name the name of the student of Shankara Acharya, whom they claim to follow. Ten divisions of Shankara Acharya's followers were collectively named Das ^[3] KOHN.

Apparently, the bulk of the gosains operating in North India in the 18th and early 19th centuries belonged to the Gir or Giri subgroup of gosain.

James Rennel, an early British geographer and employee of the East India Company, encountered a group of Gosain in 1767 near the Bhutanese border as they headed for a pilgrimage to Bengal.

Their movements were often dictated by religious festivities, both local rustic in nature and more widely celebrated, such as Hawley. Since these festivals were also reasons for seasonal markets, the state states could move goods and trade them between districts.

The numbers of such itinerant religious groups may have been large, with likely numbers exceeding 50,000 for communities led by figures such as Umrao Giri and Himmat Bahadur Anup Giri Gosein in the late 1700s. Their numerical composition allowed them to provide self-defense, as well as protect the trade routes they used, regardless of who could wield titular power in a particular region.

At least one of the three separate events, which are grouped into the so-called Sanyasi uprising, involved the state states along with other cases of their frequent clashes with the East India Company army on the northern borders of Bengal.

One of the main causes of the conflict was the collection of taxes by British colonialists from local nobility, which deprived the latter of the opportunity to pay traditional alms to ascetic groups.

Researchers

The scientific studies of Professor J.N. Farquhar revealed a lot of interesting information about the militant ascetics of India, and in particular about the armed sannyasi, to reveal the history of which he was specially aimed. It was a subject on which there was little information, and further clarification of which he believed would contribute greatly to understanding the confusion of sects in North India. For Dr Farquhar, like many of his friends, it was a poignant disappointment that he was forced by ill health to leave India before finishing a study that had already begun to produce valuable results. The materials of his research were embodied in two articles published in June 1925: one entitled "Organization of the Sannyasi Vedanta" in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the other entitled "Warring Ascetics of India" in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (vol. 9, No. 2).

The article "Armed Religious Ascetics in North India" by W.G. Orr, a former missionary of the Church of Scotland in Rajputan, was conceived in the 1930s as an addition to these two studies and aimed ​​na combining new ^[4]

Notes