1879.1 F. S. Growse — The Sect of the Pran-natliis. 171 



The Sect of the Prdn-ndth's. — By F. S. Growse, Bengal Givil Service, 



M. A. OXON., C. I. E. 



The small and obscure sect of the Pran-nathis is one of the few, of 

 whose literature Prof. Wilson, in his Essays on the Religion of the Hin- 

 dus, was unable to furnish a specimen. This I am now in a position to 

 supply, having obtained while at Mathura a copy of one of the poems of 

 Pran-nath himself, from the sole representative of the sect in that city. 

 It is very curious, both from the advanced liberalism of its theological ideas 

 and also from the uncouthness of the language, in which the construction 

 of the sentences is purely Hindi, while the vocabulary is mainly supplied 

 from Persian and Arabic sources. The writer, a Kshatriya by caste, lived 

 at the beginning of the 18th century and was under the special patronage 

 of Chhattrasal, the famous Raja of Panna in Bundelkhand, who is com- 

 monly said by the Muhammadans to have been converted to Islam, though 

 in reality he only went as far as Pran-nath, who endeavoured to make a 

 compromise between the two religions. His followers are sometimes called 

 Dhamis, from jDMm, a name of the Supreme Spirit or Paramatma. Like 

 the Sikhs and several of the later Hindu sects they are not idolaters, so far 

 that they do not make or reverence any image of the divinity, but if they 

 have any temple at all, the only object of religious veneration which it 

 contains is a copy of the works of the founder. His treatises, — which, as 

 usual, are all in verse — are fourteen in number, none of them of very great 

 length, and bear the following titles : 1, The book of Ras ; 2, of Prakas ; 3, 

 of Shat-rit ; 4, of Kalas ; 5, of Sanandh ; 6, of Kirantan ; 7, of Khulasa ; 8, 

 of Khel-bat ; 9, of Prakrama Illahi Dulhan (an allegory in which the Church 

 or ' Bride of God' is represented as a holy city) ; 10, of Sagar Singar ; 11, 

 of Bare Singar ; 12, of Sidhi Bhasa ; 13, of Marafat Sagar ; 14, of Kiya- 

 mat-nama. The shortest is the last, of which I now proceed to give the 

 text, followed by an attempt at a translation, which I am afraid is not 

 altogether free from error, as I am not much versed in Koranic literature 

 and may have misunderstood some of the allusions. The owner of the MS., 

 Karak Das by name, though professing so liberal a creed, was not a particu- 

 larly enlightened follower of his master, for I found it impossible to con- 

 vince him that the Isa of the Koran, so repeatedly mentioned by Pran-nath, 

 was really the same as the incarnate God worshipped by the English. Like 

 most of the Bairagis and Gosains with whom I have talked, his idea was 

 that the fiery and impetuous foreign rulers of the country were Siiraj-ban- 

 sis, or Descendants of the Sun ; and that the sun was the only God they 



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