Sannyasa (Devanagari: सन्यास, sannyāsa) is the order of life of the renouncer within the Hindu scheme of āśramas, or life stages. It is considered the topmost and final stage of the ashram systems and is traditionally taken by men or women at or beyond the age of fifty years old or by young monks who wish to renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and instead dedicate their entire life towards spiritual pursuits. In this phase of life, the person develops vairāgya, or a state of dispassion and detachment from material life. He renounces all worldly thoughts and desires, and spends the rest of his life in spiritual contemplation. One within the sannyasa order is known as a sannyasin (male) or sannyasini (female).
During the sannyasa phase of life, a person may be said to abandon fire (Agnihotra, allowed to the householder stage of life, the Grihastha ashram). It means that during sannyasa ashram, the person may choose not to cook, perform fire rituals or take heat from fire. In practice, however, Sannyasis generally do various services and partake in sacred rituals to set an example for others. Sannyasa focuses only on the self and spirituality and not even the gods (as abandoning fire suggests). Symbolically, a sannyasi casts his physical body to fire by wearing saffron robes at the moment of taking up sannyasa itself, thus freeing his soul, while yet alive. Hence, sannyasis are not cremated after death (as most Hindus are) but may instead be buried.
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Saṃnyāsa in Sanskrit means "renunciation" or "abandonment". It is a tripartite compound of saṃ- has "collective" meaning, ni- means "down" and āsa is from the root as, meaning "to throw" or "to put", so a literal translation would be "laying it all down". In Dravidian languages, "sannyasi" is pronounced as "sanyasi" and also "sannasi" in colloquial form.
There are a number of types of sannyasi in accordance with socio-religious context. Traditionally there are four types of forest hermits with different stages of dedication.[1] In recent history, two distinct orders are observed "ekadanda" (literally single stick) and "tridanda' (triple rod or stick) saffron robed monks,.[2] Austerities and attributes associated with the order, as well as expectations will differ in both.
The sannyasi lives a celibate life without possessions, practises yoga meditation — or in other traditions, bhakti, or devotional meditation, with prayers to their chosen deity or God. The goal of the Hindu Sannsyasin is moksha (liberation), the conception of which also varies. For the devotion oriented traditions, liberation consists of union with the Divine, while for Yoga oriented traditions, liberation is the experience of the highest samādhi (enlightenment). For the Advaita tradition, liberation is the removal of all ignorance and realising oneself as one with the Supreme Brahman.
Within the Bhagavad Gita, sannyasa is described by Krishna as follows:
"The giving up of activities that are based on material desire is what great learned men call the renounced order of life [sannyasa]. And giving up the results of all activities is what the wise call renunciation [tyaga]." (18.2)[3]
Sanskrit and Indic scholar Barbara Stoler Miller translates chapter 18, verse 2 as follows:
"Giving up actions based on desire, the poets know as renunciation; relinquishing all fruit of action, learned men call relinquishment.
"Disciplined action and relinquishment are spiritually more effective than renunciation."[4]
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's translation of verse 3, Chapter 5 of the Bhagavad-Gita, says:
"Know him to be ever a man of renunciation who neither hates nor desires; free from the pairs of opposites, he is easily released from bondage, O mighty-armed."[5]
The Dharmasūtras and Dharmaśāstras give a number of detailed rules regarding at what stage of life a person may renounce, who is entitled to renounce, and what their legal and social standing is following renunciation.
The earliest Dharmasūtras evince a very disapproving attitude towards renunciation. The author of the earliest stage of the Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra, for example, is critical of renunciation because ascetics do not reproduce. The birth of a son was necessary for a twice-born man to repay his spiritual debt to his ancestors. Because a Vedic student (snātaka), having completed his education, is required to start a family as a householder, Baudāyana states that only the householder's āśrama exists for him.[6] At the time Baudāyana was composed, the āśramas were most likely permanent states of life chosen after one finished his time as a snātaka, not the sequential life stages they would later become.[7]
The Vasiṣṭha and Āpastamba Dharmasūtras represent a transition from the disapproval of the idea of various āśramas (including that of the ascetic) expressed in Baudāyana and Gautama to the acceptance of the āśrama system and gradual efforts to incorporate it into the framework of texts on dharma.[8] Those efforts culminated in the form of the aśrama system found in the Manusmṛti; by the time that text was composed, the āśramas had taken the form of sequential temporary stages which would allow one to pass from Vedic studentship to householder to forest-dwelling hermit to renouncer.[9] Thus, Manu and Yājñavalkya after him are able to stipulate that a renouncer must have paid his triple-debt as a householder before renouncing the world.[10] However, Yājñavalkya differs from Manu and Viṣṇu over whether passing through the āśrama of the vanaprastha is necessary. Manu 6.33 and Viṣṇu 96.1 state that one should renounce from the forest-dwelling hermit's āśrama, while Yājñavalkya 3.56 states that one may renounce from the householder's āśrama, provided he has paid the triple debt (to his ancestors, the Vedic sages, and the gods).
Although the question of which vaṛṇa renunciation is allowed to is not dealt with explicitly in dharma literature, it was understood that the āśrama system, including the āśrama of renunciation, was only open to dvija men.[11] Accordingly, when speaking of the rules for renouncers, Dharmaśāstra texts only directly address twice-born men. For instance, when Manu speaks of the qualities of a renouncer or the conditions under which he renounces, the person being spoken of is outrightly specified a "a Brahmin" or "that twice-born man".[12]
Nevertheless, Dharmaśāstra texts themselves attest to the fact that people besides twice-born men, that is, Śūdras and women, did renounce, even if the texts only mention such renouncers to castigate them. One must ask why Yājñavalkya 5.115 and Viṣṇu 2.235 would place a fine on feeding a Śūdra ascetic at a festival, or why Manu 8.363 would place a fine on conversing with a female renouncer, if such individuals did not exist in the first place.[13]
In renouncing the world, the ascetic becomes, for all religious and social purposes, dead. A ritual death is, in fact, part of the rite of renunciation itself. The ascetic is no longer bound to perform the Vedic rites enjoined upon twice-born men; he leaves his family behind to live a homeless life.[14] This state of being ritually dead is reflected in the laws relating to ascetics found in the Dharmaśāstras. Laws pertaining to renouncers are closely connected to and overlap with laws relating to the dead. Thus, Viṣṇu 6.27 states that when a debtor dies, renounces the world, or is in a far-off country for over twenty years, his male progeny should settle his debts. Nārada 13.24 allows the brothers of a renouncer to partition amongst themselves any inheritance he may have received from his father, except for a portion of money which should go to his "widow". Nārada 12.97 allows a wife to remarry if her husband disappears or dies, or becomes a renouncer, a eunuch, or an outcaste. Some texts, however, require that a man have provided financially for his wife and children before renouncing.[15] Relatedly, Nārada 1.7 states that if a renouncer dies in debt, all the merit produced by his spiritual practice goes to his creditors.
Thus, renunciants are not only socially dead but legally dead as well. Like any dead person, they cannot enter into new contractual agreements. Kauṭilya provides a clear expression of this in the Arthaśāstra when he states that transactions cannot be completed by dependents and renouncers (3.1.12). Nārada 1.159-169 includes renouncers among those who cannot be questioned as witnesses in a court case.
Other rules pertaining to ascetics hinge on the spiritual power they were believed to have acquired through their austerities. The Bṛhaspatismṛti, at 1.27, warns the king to have a proxy, and specifically someone schooled in the three Vedas, hear cases involving ascetics and others skilled in sorcery. Since ascetics were believed to have supernatural powers, incurring the anger of the losing party to such a case would have been viewed as potentially threatening to a king's life. What is more important to the larger discussion of ascetics and Ancient Indian law, however, is the acknowledgment that cases could and sometimes did involve ascetics, despite their legally and socially dead status.
Unlike monks in the Western world, whose lives are regulated by a monastery or an abbey and its rules, some Hindu sannyasis are loners and wanderers (parivrājaka). Hindu monasteries (mathas) never have a large number of monks living under one roof. The monasteries exist primarily for educational purposes and have become centers of pilgrimage for the lay population. Ordination into any Hindu monastic order is purely at the discretion of the individual guru, who should himself be an ordained sannyasi within that order. Most traditional Hindu orders do not have women sannyasis, but this situation is undergoing changes in recent times.[16][17]
In the Varnashrama System or Dharma of Sanatana Dharma, the 'danda' (Sanskrit; Devanagari: दंड, lit. stick) is a spiritual attribute and axis mundi of certain deities such as Bṛhaspati, and holy people such as sadhus carry the danda as an austerity and marker of their station as a mendicant renunciate or sannyasi.
Of the 108 scriptures (or "Upanishads") of the Muktika, 23 are considered Sannyasa Upanishads.[18] They are listed with their associated Veda – ṚV, SV, ŚYV, KYV, AV (as found in the Upanishad):
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