90 ■ '■ RELIGIOUS SECTS 



Amongst other articles of the new creed, Vallabha introduced one, 

 which is rather singular for a Hindu religious innovator or reformer : he 

 taught, that privation formed no part of sanctity, and that it was the duty of 

 the teachers and his disciples to worship their deity, not in nudity and hunger, 

 but in costly apparel and choice food, not in solitude and mortification, but 

 in the pleasures of society, and the enjoyment of the world. The Gosains, or 

 teachers, are almost always family men, as was the founder Vallabha, for af- 

 ter he had shaken off the restrictions of the monastic^order to which he origi- 

 nally belonged, he married, by the particular order, it is said, of his new god. 

 The Gosains are always clothed with the best raiment, and fed with the dainti- 

 est viands by their followers, over whom they have unlimited influence : part of 

 the connexion between the Gu7'u and teacher, being the three-fold Samarpa?i, 

 or consignment of Ta?ij Man, and Dlian, body, mind, and wealth, to the 

 spiritual guide. Tlie followers of the order are especially numerous amongst the 

 mercantile community, and the Gosains themselves are often largely engaged, 

 also, in maintaining a connexion amongst the commercial establishments of 

 remote parts of the country, as they are constantly travelling over India, under 

 pretence of pilgrimage, to the sacred shrines of the sect, and notoriously re- 

 concile, upon these occasions, the profits of trade, with the benefits of devo- 

 tion : as religious travellers, however, this union of objects renders them more 

 respectable than the vagrants of any other sect. 



The practices of the sect are of a similar character with those of other 

 regular worshippers : their temples and houses have images of Gopal, of Krish- 

 na and Radha, and other divine forms connected with this incarnation, of 

 metal chiefly, and not unfrequently of gold : the image of Krishna represents 

 a chubby boy, of the dark hue of which Vishnu is always represented : it is 

 richly decorated and sedulously attended ; receiving eight times a day the 



combined with you : to which Sri Thakurji (Krishna) replied ; Do you unite Brdhme and Life in 

 ^hat way you will, I shall concur, and thence all its defects will be removed," 



