that], saying that the fire is not rather fire than anything else. But they did not decLare what this is, but what sort it is.[1]
Chapter xxi.
The Brachmans—their Mode of Life—Ideas of Deity—different Sorts of—their Ethical Notions.
But there is also with the Indians a sect composed of those philosophizing among the Brachmans. They spend a contented existence, abstain both from living creatures and all cooked food, being satisfied with fruits; and not gathering these from the trees, but carrying off those that have fallen to the earth. They subsist upon them, drinking the water of the river Tazabena.[2] But they pass their life naked, affirming that the body has been constituted a covering to the soul by the Deity. These affirm that God is light, not such as one sees, nor such as the sun and fire; but to them the Deity is discourse, not that which finds expression in articulate sounds, but that of the knowledge through which the secret mysteries of nature[3] are perceived by the wise. And this light which they say is discourse, their god, they assert that the Brachmans only know on account of their alone rejecting all vanity of opinion which is the soul's ultimate covering.[4] These despise death, and always in their own peculiar language[5] call God by the name which we have mentioned previously, and they send up hymns [to him]. But neither are there women among them, nor do they beget children. But they who aim at a life similar to these, after they have
- ↑ This is what the Academics called "the phenomenon" (Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 19–22).
- ↑ This is a mistake in the manuscript for Ganges, according to Roeper.
- ↑ Or, "knowledge." (See Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. i. xv. lxxii.; Eusebius, Præparat. Evang. ix. 6.)
- ↑ Athenæus (Deipn. book ix.) ascribes this opinion to Plato, who, he tells us, "asserted that the soul was so constituted, that it should reject its last covering, that of vanity."
- ↑ Or, "they name light their god;" or, "they celebrate in their own peculiar language God, whom they name," etc.
