1835.] Hindu Schismatics in Western India. 69 



It may be right to mention in this place, that many of the reasons 

 given for the institution of particular rites were received from the 

 chief of the Ramsanehis, to whom I made three visits : he usually 

 delivered himself in Sanskrit verse, which he afterwards explained in 

 the local dialect, for the instruction of his hearers. 



It was a maxim of Ramcharan that woman and gold in the present 

 vicious state of society were the principal sources of mischief in the 

 world, he therefore enacted a strict ordinance for priests to shun both 

 of them. The founder, a married man without a family, set the ex- 

 ample of putting away his wife ; and this sacrifice, with the desertion 

 of one's children, are essential to obtain admission to the order : but the 

 families of these Byragis are, I believe, in all cases comfortably pro- 

 vided for. So strictly is the rule of continence enforced, that a priest 

 is only permitted to converse with females on matters connected with 

 religion ; the smallest approach to levity would involve the dismissal 

 of the culprit. Dulha Ram, the third Hierarch, was affianced at the 

 time he became a Ramsanehi, and of course broke troth and cast 

 away the kangna or thread bound round a bridegroom's wrist ; hence 

 his name Dulha or the Bridegroom. A Turan*, representing a bunch 

 of flowers in stone, is suspended under the porchway of his shrine at 

 Shahpura, in commemoration of the circumstance. 



Gold is supposed to beget avarice, and to accept of it destroys the 

 integrity of all previous acts of piety and virtue. I combatted its 

 interdiction on the plea that the misuse, as of every thing else, was 

 to be guarded against, but that it was capable of working much good 

 — and inquired if women were thought so ill of, why the sect admitted 

 female converts. " The touch of gold," said Narayan Das, " is a lure to 

 sin, and marriage is prohibited to ecclesiastics (not to the laity), 

 because the cares of a family would interfere materially with their 

 holy meditations. The heart should be fixed on one alone (God), he 

 who places his affections on any thing mortal, ceases to be a Byragf." 

 It is related, in example of the little value set on lucre by the Ram- 

 sanehis, that a man presented Dulha Ram on some occasion, with a 

 philosopher's stone, which the sage received in silence and cast into a 

 well. The author of the gift, indignant at the contempt shown to his 

 offering, preferred a complaint to the Raja of Shahpura, who asked 

 the superior the motive of his conduct. The man having acknowledg- 

 ed he bestowed away the stone, the Mahant inquired how he could 



* It is usual among Rdjputs of all ranks, at the time of a wedding, for the 

 father of the hride to suspend a bunch of flowers made of silk or wood, called 

 turan, at his porchway, which the bridegroom strikes with the handle of a 

 whip or stick before he enters to bear away the bride. 



