RELIGIOUS SECTS OF THE HINDUS. 203 



PARAMAHANSA. 



According to the introduction to the Dwddasa Mahavahya, by a Dandi 

 author, Vaikuntha Puri, the Sanydsi is of four kinds, the Kutichara, Bahu- 

 daka, Hansa, and Paramahansa : the difference between whom, however, 

 is only the graduated intensity of their self-mortification and profound 

 abstraction. The Paramahansa* is the most eminent of these gradations, 

 and is the ascetic who is solely occupied with the investigation of Brah- 

 ma, or spirit, and who is equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible 

 of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want. 



Agreeably to this definition, individuals are sometimes met with who 

 pretend to have attained such a degree of perfection: in proof of it they go 

 naked in all weathers, never speak, and never indicate any natural want : 

 what is brought to them as alms or food, by any person, is received by 

 the attendants, whom their supposed sanctity, or a confederation of inter- 

 est attaches to them, and by these attendants they are fed and served on 

 all occasions, as if they were as helpless as infants. It may be supposed 



that it was granted by one of the Emperors of Hindustan, in consequence of a miracle performed by 

 a Jangama devotee. In proof of the veracity of his doctrine, he proposed to fly : the Emperor 

 promised to give him as much ground as he could traverse in that manner : not quite satisfied of 

 the impossibility of the feat, he had a check string tied to the ascetic's legs, and held by one of the 

 attendants : the Jangama mounted, and when he reached the limits of the present Jangama Sari, 

 the Emperor thinking that extent of ground sufficiently liberal, had him constrained to fly back 

 again. 



* Moor, in his Hindu Pantheon, (page 352) asserts, upon, as he says, authentic information, 

 that the Paramahansas eat human flesh, and that individuals of this sect are not very unusually seen 

 about Benares, floating down the river, and feeding upon a corpse : it is scarcely necessary to add 

 that he is wholly wrong : the passage he cites from the Researches is quite correct, when it describes 

 the Paramanhansa as an ascetic of the orthodox sects, in the last stage of exaltation ; and the 

 practice he describes, although far from usual, is sometimes heard of as a filthy exhibition, dis- 

 played for profit by individuals of a very different sect, those who occupy the ensuing portion of 

 the present text — the Aghoris. 



e 



