gS ]:. ' RELIGIOUS SECTS 



bot there are many Mafhs of his followers, oF celebrity at Benares^ whose Pan- 

 chait^ or council, is the chief authority amongst the Rdmdxvats in Upper India : 

 we shall have frequent occasion to mention these MafJis^ or convents, and a 

 short account of them may, therefore, here be acceptable. - 



Most of the religious sects of which we have to give an account, com- 

 prise various classes of individuals, resolvable, however, especially into two, 

 whom (for want of more appropriate terms) we must call, perhaps. 

 Clerical and Lay : the bulk of the votaries are generally, but not 

 always of the latter order, whilst the rest, or the Clerical class, are 

 sometimes monastic, and sometimes secular : most of the sects, especially 

 the Vaislmavas, leave this distinction a matter of choice : the Vallabhdchdris, 

 indeed, give the preference to married teachers, and all their Gosains are men 

 of business and family : the preference, however, is usually assigned to teach- 

 ers of an ascetic or coenobitic life, whose pious meditations are not distracted 

 by the affections of kindred, or the cares of the world : the doctrine that intro- 

 duced similar unsocial institutions into the Christian church, in the fourth 

 century, being still most triumphantly prevalent in the east, the land of its na- 

 tivity ; the establishments of which we are treating, and the still existing prac- 

 tices of solitary mortification, originating in the *' specious appearance and 

 pompous sound of that maxim of the ancient philosophy, that in order to 

 the attainment of true felicity and communion with God, it was necessary that 

 the soul should be separated from the body even here below, and that the body 

 was to be macerated and mortified for that purpose." (Mosheim. i. 378.) 



Of the coenobitic members of the different communities, most pursue an 

 erratic and mendicant life : all of them, indeed, at some period have led such 

 a life, and have travelled over various parts of India singly or in bodies, sub- 

 sisting by alms, by merchandise, and sometimes, perhaps, by less unexception- 

 able means, like the Sarahaites of the east, or the mendicant friars of the Latin 



