"These people," said he, "belong to a sect of Ascetics in this country, who are persuaded that all pleasure received through the senses is sinful, and that man never appears so acceptable in the sight of the Deity, as when he rejects all the delicacies of the palate, as well as other sensual gratifications, and imposes on himself that food to which he feels naturally most repugnant.

In this couplet and the following the poet ridicules the ascetics of his time.

He was dressed in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale, thin face, which lighted up very much when discussing any subject that interested him.

But he was no more austere than Chrysostom, no more ascetic than Basil, not even sterner in character than Michael Angelo, or more unsocial than Pascal or Cromwell or William the Silent.

They did not make a show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans.

It would not be hard to quote the utterances of saints and ascetics for either view; or to convict individual authorities of seeming self-contradiction in the matter.

It, indeed, sent the stylite to his pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the House of God.

And beholding that virtuous ascetic before him, the righteous king worshipped him according to the ordinance, with the offering of Madhuparka.

For as I have already told thee, I am pledged to another, and proof against thy spell, as doubtless was thy old ascetic against that bevy of straying queens.

And Arjuna, capable of using his left hand with skill equal to that of his right hand, then beheld before him an ascetic under the shade of a tree, blazing with Brahma brilliancy, of a tawny colour, with matted locks, and thin.

Their main purpose seems to be to illustrate the advantage of the ascetic over the secular mode of life, and to school men into living with the fear of death before their eyes.