Asceticism in Ancient India: In Brahmanical Buddhist Jaina and Ajibika Societies

Asceticism is derived from a Greek work meaning training. The athelete was one trained and one might be an athelete in Virtue. So very early the ascetic became the spiritual athelete of Church History.” “Two quite different conceptions mingle in the history of asceticism. One of these preserves the original meaning of discipline of the body for some ultimate purpose, as when William James urges sacrifice to God and duty as a means of training the Will. The other conception distrusts the body altogether. Asceticism has then as its function not the training but the destroying of the body or the negation of its importance.” “The word montasticism is derived from the Greek work ‘povos’, ‘alone’, ‘solitary’ from which a whole family of words has been formed: monks, monastic, nun, monasticism and monarchism.” Hence asceticism should be taken to mean “the form of religious life led by those who having separated themselves entirely from the world live in solitude.