The renouncers’ properties

Abstract

Renouncing the world and dedicating one’s life to religious asceticism is a prestigious act that was sometimes rewarded with rich donations, royal land grants, etc. Some ascetics were therefore able to found and maintain wealthy institutions for their tradition. Moreover, as Bernard Cohn, Matthew Clark and others have aptly pointed out, there were financial advantages over the traditional family system, in which wealth and property were often dispersed among many relatives after the death of the father: the transfer of a deceased mahant‘s (or abbot’s) wealth to a single celā (disciple) or a cohesive group of celās ensured that institutional wealth remained ‘in the house’. This accumulation of capital (among other factors) certainly helped the so-called Gosains to become a dominant trading, money-lending and property-owning group in many parts of northern India, especially in the transitional period between the twilight of the Mughal Empire and the dawn of British rule. Focusing on the less studied situation in pre-modern Nepal, the paper uses historical documents to shed light on some of the dynamics of Hindu ascetics’ property in the changing political and socio-economic environment of the world’s ‘last Hindu kingdom’.