The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (265 page)

being restraint, and
tapas
being the generation of ‘heat’ (i.e. spiritual power).
Among Sikhs, asceticism is viewed with caution: the
Gurus
advocated for all Sikhs full involvement in family life coupled with self-discipline. For the
amritdh
r
this frequently means a vegetarian diet and avoidance of
alcohol
. Austerities and penances are considered painful, irrelevant and not conducive to spiritual development. (see
GRAHASTI
;
NIRMAL
;
SR
CHAND
;
TOBACCO
.)
The origins of Christian asceticism are to be found in the strongly
eschatological
consciousness of early Christians who looked forward to an imminent end of the world in which good would triumph over evil in a holy war. They were to prepare themselves by watchfulness, prayer, fasting, and, for many, sexual continence (cf. 1 Samuel 21. 5), anticipating martyrdom as the test of their faithfulness and a sign of the imminence of the final struggle. With the triumph of Christianity in the 4th cent. this attitude of eschatological awareness was inherited by the
monastic
movement, and Christian asceticism became archetypically monastic. A systematic understanding of the demands of such asceticism on human nature was developed, notably by
Evagrius
, and later by
Cassian
and Dorotheus. The Renaissance brought a reaction against Christian asceticism, intensified by the Reformation with its tendency to suggest the worthlessness of human effort.

 
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(Lat.,
a se
, ‘in himself’, that which God is): see
NOMINALISM
.

 
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Asenath
.

Daughter of the Egyptian high priest of On and wife of
Joseph
. Her two sons, Manasseh and
Ephraim
, were the
patriarchs
of their eponymous tribes.

 
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Ash
or ashes
.

In Western religions, ashes generally represent human frailty and mortality. Thus in Christianity, ashes are smeared on the forehead during the
Ash Wednesday
ritual. The words of committal in the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer
are, ‘We commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ But in Indian religions, and especially among Hindus, ash represents the pure substance left when the impure accidents of life have been removed. Ash is therefore smeared on the body as a mark of commitment to the process of liberating the true self from all that encumbers it.
Saivites
are distinguished by three horizontal ash marks across the forehead.

 
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