Avestan drigu: 'poor, dependent, faithful'

[Guest guest]

A few words in praise of George Thompson's recent article, "Adhrigu and Drigu:

on the Semantics of an Old Indo-Iranian Word" (Journal of the American Oriental

Society, Vol. 122, no.2 Apr-Jun 2002). This excellently researched and highly

accessible document exposes to students the too-oft-unnoticed cultural links

between Old Iranian and Indic culture. Of particular interest is Thompson's

well-considered suggestion that the Old Indo-Iranian term drigu, 'poor,

dependent, faithful,' is the earliest known attestation anywhere in world

literature to the notion of 'holy beggar.' Apart from this, he furthermore shows

that drigu was employed in Sogdian translations of Buddhist texts as a gloss for

Sanskrit bhikshu, and that in some Iranian languages, derivatives of drigu were

used to gloss the term shramana. We also learn how drigu eventually "culminated

in Modern Persian darvð, [darvð] 'beggar, wanderer, ascetic, member of a Sufi

order,'" and further, as a term of self-designation, adopted by Zoroastrians,

including Zarathustra himself. It is particularly amazing to discover that drigu

eventually morphed into a cult-specific term that surfaced in English as

"dervish."

 

For quite some time, I have pondered the origin and development of

asceto-religious renunciation and the multifarious institution of monk in South

Asia. In Vedic myth and society, it appears that world-forsakers played no

important role, if any at all. Yet, a key exception is the Kâpâlika ascetic who

performed the penitential observance called kâpâlika-vrata. This apparently

stemmed from the Dharmasûtra punishment prescribed for a brâhmin committing

"brâhmacide," i.e., killing a fellow high-caste member. These outcast

cremation-ground dwellers lived solely by alms. They constantly carried the

skull of the brâhmin they killed and used it as their begging bowel. They

undertook this highly ritually impure status for a period of twelve years. In

the view of Alexis Sanderson (1988, 1990), the kâpâlika-vrata came to be adopted

as the principal ascetic practice of the earliest Tantric sect, the Lâkulas, and

subsequently came to pervade all of Shaivism and Tantric Buddhism, and to

varying degrees, nearly all forms of Asiatic asceticism. (See my "Preliminary

Notes on Gautama & The Kapalika Religion,"

Abhinavagupta/message/444)

 

Nonetheless, the severe morbidity and antisocial tenor evoked by Kâpâlika

transgress-sacrality, paints for me a highly convoluted psychic landscape

starkly divergent to the restrained, austere imagery which drigu seems to call

to mind.

 

Therefore, in light of the well-traced Kâpâlika account, it would be of great

interest to know what - if any at all - influences Old Iranian conceptions of

drigu might have brought to bear on later Indic asceticism.

 

_________

 

Troy Dean Harris

 

PS. For relevant discussions, search the following subjects in Indology

Archives:

 

Buddhism as Iranian heresy?

 

Saka, Sakya and Buddhism

 

Iranians in Ancient India

 

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?S1=indology&D=1&F=P&O=D

 

 

 

 

 

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