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APPENDIX II
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Why then Manu carved out Vanaprastha as a separate stage from Grahasthashram and from Sannyas? Regarding Vanaprastha it can be said that such a class existed before Manu. They were called Aranas. According to Prof. Radha Kumud Mookerji [1] :
“Brahmacharis, who wanted to continue as such, without marrying in pursuit of knowledge, were called Aranas or Aranamans. These Aranas lived in hermitages in the forests outside the villages or centres of population. The forests where these Arana ascetics lived were, called Aranyas. The philosophical speculations of these learned ascetics regarding such ultimate problems as Brahma, Creation, Soul, or Immortality are embodied in works called Aranyakas.”
To these old Aranas Manu gave the name Vanaprasthas which has the same meaning as Aranas. Manu has not only made a change in names he has introduced another change of considerable significance. In between Brahmacharya and Vanaprastha he has introduced a married state. While the original Vanaprastha or Arana was an unmarried person, Manu’s Vanaprastha was necessarily a married man. In the old system Brahmacharya was followed by Vanaprastha or by Grahasthashram depending upon the choice of the individual. Manu changed the order, so that no one could become a Vanaprastha unless he was first married.
The old system, the two stages of Vanaprastha or Sannyasi, did not involve any hardship or cruelty to wives and children. The new system introduced by Manu did. For to force a person to marry and then to permit him to abandon his wife is nothing short of cruelty if it did not involve criminality. But Manu did not care for such considerations. He was bent on making matrimony compulsory for all.
Why did Manu do it? Why did he make Grahasthashram compulsory for a Vanaprastha or Sannyasi? Manu recognizes the married state as a superior stage the foundation of all other states. As he says:
VI. 87 “The student, the householder, the hermit and the ascetics, these (constitute) four separate orders, which all spring from (the order of) householders.
VI. 88 “But all (or even any of) these orders, assumed successively in accordance with the Institutes (of the sacred law), lead the Brahmana who acts by the preceding (rules) to the highest state.
VI. 89 “And in accordance with the precepts of the Veda and of the Smriti, the housekeeper is declared to be superior to all of them; for he supports the other three.
1 Education in Ancient India p. 6.