sanyasin.

1613 S. Purchas Pilgrimage v. ix. 417 Some [Bramenes] wander from place to place begging: Some (an vnlearned kinde) are called Sanasses.

1766 J. Rennell Let. 30 Aug. in H. Yule & A. C. Burnell Hobson-Jobson (1886) 662/1 The Sanashy Faquirs (part of the same Tribe which plundered Dacca in Cossim Ally's Time).

1773 W. Hastings Let. 2 Feb. in Gleig Life (1841) I. 282 You will hear of great disturbances committed by the Sinassies, or wandering Fackeers.

1777 Stewart in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 67 483 This Indian..must have travelled as a Faquier or Sunniassy through Bengal into Thibet.

1812 J. Malcolm in Asiatic Researches (London ed.) 11 267 That crowd of holy mendicants, Sanyásís and Fakírs, with whom India swarms.

1839 Lett. fr. Madras (1843) xxiii. 244 A Sunnyassee, or Hindoo devotee, came to pray in the middle of the river.

1854 M. Evans tr. L. Feuerbach Essence Christianity xvii. 167 No regenerate man could assume the rank of a Sanyassi,..if he had not previously paid three debts.

1876 Encycl. Brit. IV. 204/2 Sannyāsin (or bhikshu), or religious mendicant.

1876 M. Monier-Williams Indian Wisdom (ed. 3) 260 He is sometimes called a Sannyasin, ‘one who has given up the world.’

1885 G. S. Forbes Wild Life in Canara 88 A Hindoo sunyási, or hermit, lived in a cave under the overhanging rock.

1891 M. Monier-Williams Brāhmanism & Hindūism 55 He was a Sannyāsī and an unmarried Smārta Brāhman.

1921 T. R. Glover Jesus in Experience of Men viii. 144 We sometimes see men with paralysed minds calling themselves Christians, as proud of the withered intellect as the Sannyasi of his ruined arm.

1921 B. H. Streeter & A. J. Appasamy Sadhu v. 146 He hid the Hindi New Testament he had in his hand, thinking that I was a Hindu Sannyasi.

1938 W. S. Maugham Writer's Notebk. (1949) 280 At his birth his horoscope was taken, and the astrologer said that he would either become a very rich, successful man, a king among men, or a sanyasin.

1957 Contributions to Indian Sociol. I. 17 Now, what one is in the habit of calling Indian Thought is for the very great part the thought of the sanyasi.

1960 E. R. Leach Aspects of Caste in S. India, Ceylon & N.W. Pakistan 6 It is open to every man to become a sannyasi and receive the adulations of his society.

1978 Times 5 Aug. 7/8 Dom Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who has spent the past 16 years of his life as a sannyasi—a kind of hermit—at a Hindu ashram at Kerala in India.

1980 Daily Tel. 13 Feb. 15/4 She joined a group of sanyassins, and became fascinated with the guru's writings.