FJACULATION something said quickly and suddenly.
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Religious melas are mentioned in the ancient Mahabharata. The Chinese traveler Hieuen Tsiang has left an account of a vast Kumbha Mela held in A.D. 644 at Allahabad. The largest mela is held every twelfth year; the next largest (Ardha or half) Kumbha occurs every sixth year. Smaller melas convene every third year, attracting about a million devotees. The four sacred mela cities are Allahabad, Hardwar, Nasik, and Ujjain.
Early Chinese travelers have left us many striking pictures of Indian society. The Chinese priest, Fa-Hsien, wrote an account of his eleven years in India during the reign of Chandragupta II (early 4th century). The Chinese author relates: "Throughout the country no one kills any living thing, nor drinks wine. . . . They do not keep pigs or fowl; there are no dealings in cattle, no butchers' shops or distilleries. Rooms with beds and mattresses, food and clothes, are provided for resident and traveling priests without fail, and this is the same in all places. The priests occupy themselves with benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies; or they sit in meditation." Fa-Hsien tells us the Indian people were happy and honest; capital punishment was unknown.
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: Sri Yukteswar passed at this hour-7:00 P.M., March 9, 1936.
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Funeral customs in India require cremation for householders; swamis and monks of other orders are not cremated, but buried. (There are occasional exceptions.) The bodies of monks are symbolically considered to have undergone cremation in the fire of wisdom at the time of taking the monastic vow.
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All Greek observers comment on the lack of slavery in India, a feature at complete variance with the structure of Hellenic society.
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KADM
: "Inclusion in one of these four castes originally depended not on a man's birth but on his natural capacities as demonstrated by the goal in life he elected to achieve," an article in East-West for January, 1935, tells us. "This goal could be (1) kama, desire, activity of the life of the senses (Sudra stage), (2) artha, gain, fulfilling but controlling the desires (Vaisya stage), (3) dharma, self-discipline, the life of responsibility and right action (Kshatriya stage), (4) moksha, liberation, the life of spirituality and religious teaching (Brahmin stage). These four castes render service to humanity by (1) body, (2) mind, (3) will power, (4) Spirit.
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Overcoming restlessness of body and mind by concentration techniques has achieved astonishing results: it is no novelty at Ranchi to see an appealing little figure, aged nine or ten years, sitting for an hour or more in unbroken poise, the unwinking gaze directed to the spiritual eye. Often the picture of these Ranchi students has returned to my mind, as I observed collegians over the world who are hardly able to sit still through one class period. 40-4
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-- Albert Einstein
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