Ashrams

Ashram refers to a mode of Hindu life which consists of four stages of development: 1. Being a student and devoted to one's teacher. 2. Being a householder with obligations to family, priests and deities 3. Being a hermit, who with or without his wife, retreats from material concerns. 4. Being a renouncer, who forsakes all possessions in order to contemplate the eternal and, like the hermit, pursue spiritual liberation.

In the novel, Chid is a hermit or renouncer, as he has forsaken all of his material possesions as well as his original British life in order to achieve life on a higher spiritual plane.

"Graduation" from the student stage of development was marked by social expectations as well as a ceremonial bath. Upon completing the first stage, graduated students are exorted by their former teachers to "speak the truth", "practice virtue", and not neglect their studies/obligations to teachers, gods, and ancestors.

Revival of Hindu Ashrams in modern India - Revival of the Ashram mode of life in the early twentieth century can be attributed to Neo-Hindu movements and, more specifically, to Hindu-Reformers in the years between 1863-1973. (Heat and Dust takes place in 1920s and 1970s).



Works Cited:

Jones, Lindsay, Mircea Eliade, and Charles J. Adams. //Encyclopedia of Religion//. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Print.