The Dwellers on High Mountains, by W.Q. Judge

William Quan Judge · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 8 pages

First published in The Word in June 1912 and reprinted in Dara Eklund's compilation Echoes of the Orient, volume III. Judge begins by distinguishing the belief he is describing from the ordinary sight of fakirs of varying sanctity found all over India: the natives speak also of men who dwell alone in places remote from human habitation, and who are regarded with a veneration quite unlike that given the ordinary travelling devotee.

The Hindu view, as Judge reports it, is that devotion to religious contemplation is among the highest walks in life, and that the travelling ascetic has gained great advancement by renunciation — but that others are further advanced still. Finding the magnetism of ordinary people and of places where people congregate inimical to progress, these have retired to spots hard to find even when sought and unlikely to be stumbled on. High mountains are chosen, Judge argues, because the paths worn by men always follow the shortest or easiest route, as electricity follows the line of least resistance. English and French travellers repeat the local traditions of holy men living alone on neighbouring mountains; the name given to such men is mahatma.

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