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A View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
The Hindoo shastrŭs have described four different states (ashrŭmŭ) into which it is proper for each bramhŭn to enter, viz. Brŭmhŭcharyŭ, Grihŭst'hŭ, Vanŭ-prŭst'hŭ, and Brŭmhŭ-gnanēē; and it appears to have been the design of the founders of the Hindoo religion, that these orders should be suited to the four distinguishing periods in the life of man. While the youth continues in a state of instruction, he is called a Brŭmhŭcharēē, and the daily duties of this state are laid down for him; after marriage he becomes a Grihŭst'hŭ, and performs the several duties of civil life as a householder; at the age of fifty he renounces the world, and enters a forest; and lastly, by the power of religious austerities, he becomes perfectly insensible to all human things, and is absorbed in divine meditation.
The duties of a bramhŭn student are laid down at large by Mŭnoo and other writers. When the youth is about to leave this state, and to enter on the duties of a householder, he takes a staff in his hand, and pretends to leave the house, and go into a forest, to read the védŭs, and to obtain his food by begging:—but the parents stop him, saying, ‘Oh! child, return; thou shalt not go into the wilderness: we will supply thee with alms.
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