Somewhere about that time, somewhere about that place, these women, having in most cases, fulfilled their various parts in wives, mothers, or courtesans, retired to the Homeless Life in mountains, forests, or the banks of streams where they might seek deliverance for their souls.  With shaven heads, and clad in the deep saffron cloth such as the ascetic wanderer of India still wears, furnished only with a bowl for the unasked offerings of the pious and compassionate, they went their way, free from the cares and desires of this putrefying world.  As one of them—­a goldsmith’s daughter, to whom the Master himself had taught the Norm of the Fourfold Path—­as one of them explained to the tiresome relations who tried to call her back: 

  “Why herewithal, my kinsmen—­nay, my foes—­
  Why yoke me in your minds with sense desires? 
  Know me as her who fled the life of sense,
  Shorn of her hair, wrapt in her yellow robe. 
  The food from hand to mouth, glean’d here and there,
  The patchwork robe—­these things are meet for me,
  The base and groundwork of the homeless life.”

Some sought escape from the depression of luxury, some from the wretchedness of the poor, some from the abominations of the wanton, some from the boredom of tending an indifferent husband.  One of them thus utters her complaint with frank simplicity: 

  “Rising betimes, I went about the house,
  Then, with my hands and feet well cleansed I went
  To bring respectful greeting to my lord,
  And taking comb and mirror, unguents, soap,
  I dressed and groomed him as a handmaid might. 
  I boiled the rice, I washed the pots and pans;
  And as a mother on her only child,
  So did I minister to my good man. 
  For me, who with toil infinite then worked,
  And rendered service with a humble mind,
  Rose early, ever diligent and good,
  For me he nothing felt, save sore dislike.”

Others sought freedom of intellect, others the free development of personality; but, in the end, it was deliverance from earthly desires that all were seeking, for it is only through such deliverance that the final blessedness of total extinction can be reached.  Then, as they cry, they cease to wander in the jungles of the senses, rebirth comes no more, and the peace of Nirvana is won.  A poor Brahmin’s daughter who had been married to a cripple, thus exults in a multiplied redemption: 

  “O free, indeed!  O gloriously free
  Am I in freedom from three crooked things:—­
  From quern, from mortar, from my crook-back’d lord! 
  Ay, but I’m free from rebirth and from death,
  And all that dragged me back is hurled away.”

But more truly characteristic of the spiritual mind is the joyful advice of one who, having perfected herself in meditation, could thus commune with her soul: 

  “Hast thou not seen sorrow and ill in all
  The springs of life?  Come thou not back to birth! 
  Cast out the passionate desire again to Be. 
  So shalt thou go thy ways calm and serene.”