1879.1 BF. S. Growse—The Sect of the Prén-néthis. LE 
The Sect of the Prén-nathis—By F. 8. Growsr, Bengal Oivil Service, 
M. A. OXON., Cc. 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 
Prdn-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 Dhdm, a name of the Supreme Spirit or Paramitma. Like 
the Sikhs and several of the later Hindu sects they are not idolators, 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 Singér ; 11, 
of Bare Singar; 12, of Sidhi Bhasa; 13, of Marafat Sagar; 14, of Kiy4- 
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 I’sa 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 Suraj-ban- 
sis, or Descendants of the Sun, and thatthe sun was the only God they 
we 
