INTRODUCTION. 31 orthodox opinion had to subscribe, acknowledging their defeat in an unhesitating language. The origin of the Sahajiyā idea of love must be traced to some primitive institution in society where men and women mixed freely without restraint and without any respect for sexual morality. This developed in time to Madana-Utsava where the god Madana figured as a sort of Indian Belial sanctioning debaucheries in his worshippers. The Buddhists living in monasteries in later times adopted these orgiastic ceremonies and took an active part in them. This was even as the great Buddha had apprehended many centuries before, when after having twice refused to open the portals of his Holy Order to women, he was compelled to do so in favour of Mahāprajāpati by the repeated prayers of his favourite disciple Ananda. He regretted the fact, and said that as the white ants Sheetasthikā destroyed full-grown crops, the Holy Order would be destroyed in future by the mixing of men and women in monasteries.” To guard against this, he had enacted strict and wholesome lawst but the depravities he had apprehended gradually came in, and the ‘Nega-Negies, or ‘the shaven couple as the Buddhist Bhiksus and Bhiksunis were called, earned the contempt of society by their unholy lives. Yet these men and women living in monasteries where the precepts of a great religion still sounded in their ear, did not fall without a struggle. Like Dona Julia of Byron, they were at first full of noble intentions. The Tântries among them wanted to subdue animal passion by facing the temptations, and the more romantic of them indulged in an ideal love, such as the Sahajiyās still practise, and which has been described in a foregoing paragraph. All these methods, it should be stated, were adopted originally as means to lead them to the gate-way of heaven. The Madana-Utsabha developed into the Dola-Lilä of Krisna. And from the 10th to the 14th century, the realistic features of this festivity were gradually idealised, and in Chandidas this idealised form found its highest expression. Chaitanya Deva turned the channel altogether to a new direction and the Parakiyā as interpreted by him became the symbol of bliss from which the sexual feature was entirely eliminated except as an allegory. This Sahajiyā creed, therefore, touches the highest heaven of bliss and selflessness, when we have for its interpreter Chaitanya Deva or even Chandidas. But its grossly realistic feature is also present in society together with all the shades of the Täntric doctrines of the Mahāyana school of Buddhism.
- Vinaya Pitaka, Chulla Varga, 10, 1, 1-5, and 10, 1, 6. + Vinaya Pitaka, Pati Moksha and Sutta Bibhanga, 21-30.
